Michelle Obama is turning the other cheek to the sharp attacks on her husband, Senator Barack Obama, from Senator John McCain, his wife, Cindy, and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin.
In two televised interviews Wednesday night, Mrs. Obama expressed nothing but kindness toward the Republican ticket. She even offered praise for Ms. Palin, saying she provided “an excellent example” of how women can juggle work and family.
“You know, I’m a mother with kids and I’ve had a career and I’ve had to juggle,” Mrs. Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
“She’s doing publicly what so many women are doing on their own privately,” she added. “What we’re fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have.”
Mr. King was trying to get a rise out of Mrs. Obama, bringing up several criticisms of her husband, but she deflected most of them, both with Mr. King and on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.
Instead, she took a decidedly non-partisan approach as she offered reassurances about her husband — and herself — and sought to court voters, especially working-class women and independents, who may be attracted to Ms. Palin.
“Most people really want to find solutions,” she told Mr. Stewart. “And they want leaders who are going to unite us around a set of solutions that are going to make sense.”
She told Mr. King that she harbored no ill will toward Ms. Palin for saying recently that Mr. Obama was “someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,” a reference to Bill Ayers, the 1960s radical.
Mr. King asked whether she knew Mr. Ayers. “I don’t know anyone in Chicago who’s heavily involved in education policy who doesn’t know Bill Ayers,” Mrs. Obama said.
But, she hastened to add — and this was her central message of the evening — the back and forth of the campaign is not of interest to voters, who care more about jobs and the economy.
Besides, Mrs. Obama told Mr. King, she and her husband don’t see the negative ads because she is too busy to watch TV and when her husband watches, he tunes into sports.
She made the same point with Mr. Stewart, to more amusing effect.
When she said she had “stopped reading and watching a lot of stuff,” Mr. Stewart put in: “So, you’re a lot like Sarah Palin?”
The line got a big laugh and applause.
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Obama said. (She said that sometimes she is relieved not to be campaigning so she can watch “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”)
Mr. Stewart asked her if, when Ms. Palin asks voters who is the real Barack Obama, she doesn’t want to ask back, “Who are you?”
“That does cross your mind,” Mrs. Obama allowed, but she added that Mr. Obama had been vetted for 20 months and was in a tough primary and said that if something bad was there, it would have come out by now.
On Larry King, she brushed off Mr. McCain’s reference during Tuesday’s debate to her husband as “that one.” And she said that she had a respectful relationship with Mrs. McCain, even though Mrs. McCain had said on Tuesday that that Mr. Obama had waged “the dirtiest campaign in American history.”
No matter who wins the election, Mrs. Obama said, there should be no hard feelings.
“You can’t tear up the game so much so that, you know, you don’t leave people something to come back to,” she said. “You know, we’re going to need John McCain, we’re going to need Cindy McCain, we’re going to need independents and Republicans working hard to fix this crisis.”
Mrs. Obama also dismissed a suggestion from Mr. King that voters might vote against her husband on racial grounds. She said she did not believe in the so-called Bradley effect, which occurred in 1982, when voters told pollsters they would vote for Tom Bradley, a black man, for governor of California but then did not do so.
“If there was going to be a Bradley effect,” she said, Mr. Obama would not have won the nomination. Besides, she said, the Bradley episode was “several decades ago, and there’s been growth and movement.”
“Now, there will be people who will never vote for Barack Obama,” she said. “But there will be people who will never vote for John McCain either.”
She added: “I just believe that the issues are going to weigh in people’s hearts more so as they go into the voting booths this time around, than anything else.”
She also told a story about telling her 10-year-old daughter, Malia, that it was an historic moment when Mr. Obama won the nomination because he was the first African-American to do so.
“And Malia said, ‘Well, yes, you know, I realize what a big deal it is,’ she said, ‘but it would have been a big deal if Hillary Clinton had won too,’ ” Mrs. Obama said. “She said it without blinking an eye. She said, ‘Because women didn’t have the right to vote and there was inequality there.’ It was a matter-of-fact.”
She added that Mrs. Clinton had been “phenomenal” to her, had provided advice and was “a real pro and a woman with character.”
On Comedy Central, Mr. Stewart noted that the role of First Lady was becoming almost like an elected office itself, as the spouses were being vetted as much as the candidates.
Mrs. Obama attributed that to the 24-hour news cycle, where the media says: “Now we know what the candidates are like, where can we go next? Let’s take a look at their wives and their houses and their — all of that good stuff.”
She added: “I think it’s fair because we’re in there, you know, and it’s important for people to — they need to have a comfort level with me as well as with Cindy McCain.”
Mr. Stewart, continuing with his theme about the First Lady being an elective office, said how weird it would be if Mr. Obama were elected but then if Mrs. McCain were elected too. “She has to move in, and that’s tough,” Mr. Stewart said.
Mrs. Obama agreed. “We don’t want that to happen,” she said.
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