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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Obama's wife helps add the human touch (FT: OBAMAS RECEIVED DEATH THREATS) Obama's wife helps add the human touch By Edward Luce in Washington Published: February 13 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 13 2008 02:00 Anyone fearing Barack Obama is succumbing to a "Messiah complex" might be disabused by observing his wife, Michelle Obama, on the campaign trail. An increasingly effective advocate for her husband, Mrs Obama has a tendency to remind people of Mr Obama's less glamorous qualities. Having revealed that Mr Obama snores, leaves the butter dish outside the fridge and drops old socks around their three-storey home in Chicago, Mrs Obama was chided by some for apparently impairing her husband's dignity. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times even accused her of "emasculating" Mr Obama when she should have been elevating him. But the effect, says Tad Devine, a senior Democratic consultant, might be to "humanise" a candidate whose most devoted supporters are treating as something akin to a saint. "Everybody knows that he can give uplifting speeches but not that many people know Barack Obama the person," said Mr Devine. "Michelle Obama is playing an essential role in providing a human picture of her husband." In an interview with Larry King on CNN on Monday evening, she did precisely that. "He is a great orator, he's inspirational, he's brilliant - all of that," she said. "But you know what? He's a good man. I meant this is a guy who, in the midst of this race, hasn't missed a parent/teacher conference. This is the stuff I look at. He took the girls trick or treating. He came home for a day to buy a Christmas tree. He took me out for our anniversary." With a schedule that at times is almost as crowded as that of her husband, Mrs Obama is providing a broader service than that. An articulate speaker - a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School - she played an important role in helping win African-American support in South Carolina and elsewhere at a time when Hillary Clinton was still ahead among black voters. Many African-Americans were sceptical about Mr Obama, whose "bi-racial" background and upbringing by white grandparents in Hawaii did not immediately identify him as sharing their concerns. Although Mr Obama has never presented himself as a black candidate, Mrs Obama's more mainstream African-American background helped reassure some wavering voters. Mr Obama won the support of more than 80 per cent of black voters in the South Carolina primary last month. "She was a very persuasive advocate," says another Democratic consultant. "If Obama's wife had been white, or less articulate, it might have been more difficult." Another quality is her toughness. Having met her future husband at a law firm in the early 1990s, Mrs Obama was initially sceptical of politics and put her husband into the "doghouse" when he announced plans to run for Congress in 2000 (unsuccessfully). Prior to his much celebrated 2004 speech to the Democratic convention in Boston, which catapulted him to national stardom and set him up for his successful Senate run later that year, she reportedly told him "Don't screw this up". He took her advice. Before deciding on whether to run for the presidency, Mr Obama had to persuade his wife who needed to know it would not damage the lives of their two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sascha, 6. A tough career woman in her own right, Mrs Obama imposed one clear condition - that he give up smoking. Mr Obama can often be seen chewing nicotine gum on the campaign trail. Having received a number of death threats last year, Mrs Obama was instrumental in securing Secret Service protection for her husband. The only other candidate with protection is Mrs Clinton from her days as first lady. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose interventions in his wife's campaign have proved controversial, Mrs Obama has avoided gaffes. But she has become practised at scoring points off Mrs Clinton without appearing to do so. "Barack is going to make mistakes," she told Mr King. "But the beauty of Barack making mistakes is that he's not going to be so stubborn that he can't admit that he's making mistakes." On the campaign trail, Mrs Obama also serves as an increasingly plausible future first lady - she has even attracted comparisons with Jackie Kennedy. Having been brought up in a one-room apartment on Chicago's gritty South Side, her biography chimes well with Mr Obama's broader theme of "hope". "She's got grace, elegance, tact and poise," says Mr Devine. "It is not hard to imagine her in the White House."
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#1. To: aristeides (#0)
It didn't help JFK.
Yeah. You can bet your bottom buck that there are rooms full of melon-headed red-neck peckerwoods just sitting around plotting his demise. I don't care if we get a green president with yellow polka-dots. Just so long as it's not a clinton or bush...oh, or McNutt.
Ditto. Defeating Hillary is job #1. It's been sickening seeing the old Clintonistas back on TV, like Ann Lewis and Lanny Davis. McCain though is probably worse than Hillary.
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