Michelle Obama uses a good parent-bad parent analogy to compare Barack Obama to Trump

Getty Images/Mark Wilson

President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump are greeted by President Barack Obama and his wife first lady Michelle Obama, upon arriving at the White House on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC.

• The former first lady, Michelle Obama, used a parenting analogy to describe the differences between President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.
• She likened Obama to the "good parent," who encourages healthy behavior, and Trump as "the other parent," who takes a lax approach to the things he's in charge of.
• This is what happens "when we take things for granted," she said.

The former first lady, Michelle Obama, used a parenting analogy to describe the differences between President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump during a panel discussion at the annual Simmons Leadership Conference in Boston on Thursday, People Magazine reported.

She likened Obama to the "good parent," who encourages healthy behavior, and Trump as "the other parent," who takes a lax approach to the things he's in charge of.

"I think what we see is what happens when we take things for granted," Obama said. "For the eight years Barack was president, it was like having the 'good parent' at home. The responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time."

Obama then described Trump.

"And now we have the other parent. We thought it'd feel fun, maybe it feels fun for now because we can eat candy all day and stay up late, and not follow the rules," she said, loosely referring to Trump's freewheeling style of governance.

She said Barack Obama saw a higher purpose for his presidency:

"What I learned is that as [Barack] said, the arc of history is long, and what we're here to do is make a mark. And you do what you do because you know it's the right thing to do, not because you'll get credit for it, or because it says something about your personal legacy. You do the work because you're slowly moving the needle."

Obama remains active politically, but she said she "never had the passion for politics," and that's why she has no plans to run for president.

"I don't want to be president. I don't think I should be president," she said. "I think I can do a lot of things, but that's not one of them."

She drove that point home in a separate interview with the "Today" show: "First of all, you have to want the job."

The former first lady's highly anticipated memoir, "Becoming," is set to be released on November 13, 2018.