President Obama starts historic national conversation about “the often magnificent beauty of some of America’s most accomplished professional women.”

President Obama’s recently-revealed opinion that California’s Kamala Harris is the “best-looking attorney general” has sparked an “important and long-avoided national dialogue that history will view as a great advance for women’s rights,” according to a White House spokesman. The incident is reminiscent of how the president used the ‘bully pulpit’ to start national conversations on race, and on homosexual marriage.

“It was not an off-the-cuff remark,” said spokesman Jay Carney. “The president’s words were straight from the TelePrompTer, and therefore, straight from his heart. He felt that this was the moment to break the unspoken national embargo on noticing the beauty of successful women.”

Carney said attractive, but powerful women have devoted countless hours and thousands of dollars to enhance their physical appearance, “only to be met with awkward silence when their attributes clearly call for a verbal response. The president believes it’s time to bring gorgeous influential women out of the shadows to be openly admired by awe-struck men.”

However, off the record, White House insiders acknowledge that Vice President Biden “forced Obama to ‘come out’ for physical compliments” before the president was ready, with Biden’s own frequent spontaneous remarks on female allure.

“The president’s views on speaking up when he’s enthralled by a successful woman’s appearance have been evolving,” said one unnamed source. “But Biden pushed the timeline for his public revelation.”

The president reportedly hopes that his groundbreaking comments will “help America get past this embarrassing chapter in our history of discrimination, and will finally put powerful, influential women on equal footing with working-class women whose efforts at beautification often meet with enthusiastic approbation from male associates.”