Michelle Obama: In the eye of the storm

“They loved to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton,” said Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times. “They loved to hate Teresa Heinz Kerry.” And now, with similar passion, Republicans are learning to hate Michelle Obama. With Barack Obama’s emergence as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the Right has zeroed in on his wife as a weak link in his uplifting campaign of hope. Michelle, critics say, is an Angry Black Woman who resents white people, hates America, and may even have terrorist sympathies. You wouldn’t believe some of the invective, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Fox News anchor E.D. Hill has called Michelle’s playful fist bump with Barack a “terrorist fist jab.” Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh and other talk-show conservatives recycled an Internet rumor that Michelle once denounced “whitey” from her church’s pulpit. The rumor is untrue, but truth is beside the point. With Hillary Clinton gone, conservatives have started a new “sulfurous national game of ‘Kill the witch,’” and Michelle is now their target.

She’s fair game, said Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. An undeniably smart and driven woman, Michelle is her husband’s “closest confidante and advisor,” and she’s traveling around the country to campaign for him. That makes her opinions very relevant. On the stump, she portrays America as a bleak and mean-spirited place. “Our souls are broken,” she says. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.” Because of her husband’s candidacy, she says, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” This woman sure can “whine,” said Peter Schweizer in National Review Online. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, Michelle Obama has had a successful career in the law and hospital management and, with her husband, has “cleared half a million a year.” Still, she complains about the cost of piano lessons and summer camp for her kids and paying off her student loans. It takes talent—and gall—to be both an elitist and a victim, but Michelle has pulled it off.

That kind of criticism is starting to take its toll, said Joe Garofoli in the San Francisco Chronicle. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 42 percent of respondents have a negative impression of Michelle, with 25 percent saying their impression is “very negative.” For that reason, said Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor in The New York Times, the Obama campaign this week began trying to soften and humanize Michelle’s image. She’s now emphasizing her humble roots in a working-class home on the South Side of Chicago, and this week did a guest-hosting stint on The View, a popular ABC daytime talk show, to portray herself as a friendly, approachable wife and mother. Her critics, Michelle says, don’t know her at all. “You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,” she says.

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But will the lies ultimately keep her husband out of the White House? asked Isaac Chotiner in TheNewRepublic.com. In 1992, the GOP demonized Hillary Rodham Clinton as a dangerous, ’60s-era radical feminist. Her husband still won in November. Don’t be surprised if Michelle ends up being just as irrelevant this year. Don’t count on that, said Jonah Goldberg in the Chicago Tribune. Michelle has a penchant for saying “fascinating, substantive things” that reveal a pretty jaundiced view of this country, and a belief that only her husband can save it. “I, for one, would like to hear more from her. But if I don’t like what she has to say, I reserve the right to say so.”