Michelle is Barack’s weak link

There is not much love for Michelle Obama. America might have gone gooey for Barack, but there is something about the missus that raises the national hackles.
 
Now that she might be on her way to the White House, which is no mean privilege, she declares that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

That sounds a lot like an exaggerated sense of entitlement. The 44-year-old lawyer, who grew up in Chicago, married Obama in 1992 and is mother to his two daughters, hastily 'clarified'. What she really meant to say was that she was proud of America for finally rising above its history of racial divide by backing a black candidate.

Maybe. But the remark still stinks in a nation in thrall to a jingoistic sense of patriotism. Just because she is black, does she not feel proud of WWII, men on the moon, truth, justice and the American way?

Michelle comes across as a bit prickly. She doesn't have Barack's charm or politician's polish. Early on, she revealed that she made him quit smoking as a condition for being allowed to run for the presidency, and would kick him out of bed in the morning for being 'stinky'.

Many a true word is said in jest, and it seems that the potential future president needs his wife's permission. That jibes with the charismatic leader on a mission for change.
 
Women who promise to vote for Obama wrinkle their noses at Michelle because "she wears the pants". Ironically, that echoes the Bill and Hillary Clinton of 1992. Like Hillary (left), Michelle fails to convince that she really does bake cookies. She is more comfortable in her job as an executive with the Chicago University Hospital Group.
 
Michelle got there via Princeton and Harvard, bastions of the Ivy League. The thesis she wrote in her final year at Princeton has been 'temporarily withdrawn' from the university's Mudd Library, but has surfaced on a blog, The Politico. It is about 'Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community' and concludes that even with her top-drawer degree she will always be "on the periphery" in America.

"I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus," she carps. "As if I don't really belong... I will always be a black first and a student second."

She complains that top universities are "designed to cater to the needs of white students" and of "problems which face black officials who must persuade the white community that they are above the issues of race and that they are representing all people and not just black people."

Michelle's turns out to be closer to the "true black voice" which Obama lacks. She spouts the conventional wisdom. But the triumph of his campaign so far is to have proved both convention and his own wife wrong. The question for the marriage counselor and the nation is whether Michelle has the grace to accept it. ·