years of the collegial presidency of Bill and

Hillary, when we were told that when we got Bill we

got Hillary as a bonus, it looks as if we are facing

another twofer: Barack and Michelle.

Effete liberal Democrats are all but canonizing

Barack Obama, who they see as one of their own —

cool, detached, impressively intellectual — all in all

what Pat Buchanan described as something fresh out of

the faculty lounge, where lofty thoughts abound and

contempt for the great unwashed is hardly concealed.

That may be an apt description, implying that the

Barack Obama who scorned ordinary folks in small

towns who, he sneered, cling to such lower-class

crutches as religion and guns, is above the distractions

of the madding crowd.

It does not, however, fit the other half of the new

twofer, Michelle Obama, who far from being above

it all is down there in the trenches acting like the

flame-throwing liberal activist she is. To know her is

to know what her husband really believes.

As I have told my listeners of my radio show, if

you want to understand how Barack Obama uncomplainingly

sat through all those fire-breathing sermons

without so much as stirring uncomfortably you

need to understand the way husbands and wives

practice their religion these days.

The men in the pews for the most part are passive,

while the wives tend to be passionate. In most cases husbands

are there because their wives have dragged them

there. Chances are that while the women sit in rapt attention

to the words of their pastor, the husbands are snoozing,

blissfully unaware of what the reverend is preaching.

From what we’ve heard from Mrs. Obama she was

paying close attention to the Reverend Mr. Wright, eating

up his fiery words and probably enthusiastically

nodding agreement as he blamed whitey for inventing

AIDS to kill blacks as Barack dozed beside her, wondering

when the Reverend Wright was going to shut up.

Barack is now wide awake, and for the next seven

months he’s going to continue to be faced with explaining

why he remained silent while his pastor ranted in

the pulpit. And insisting that during his presence in the

pews the Reverend Wright never once acted like Reverend

Wright just won’t wash. Poor Barack, how can

he admit that he didn’t hear any of that rabble-rousing

rhetoric because he slept through all 20 years of it?

If you want to find the culprit here, turn to

Michelle. I’m willing to bet she heard every word of

the Reverend Wright’s inflammatory sermons, swallowed

them whole, and seethed in anger over White

America’s wretched mistreatment of her fellow black

Americans as described by her pastor.

Nowadays she’s playing the role of dutiful wife

and doting mother, but every once in a while her

anger surfaces as it did most famously when she told

a group in Milwaukee, “For the first time in my

adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels

like hope is making a comeback.”

Just what is hope in Michelle Obama’s lexicon?

Why it’s nobody other than the man she shared a

pew with for 20 years, her husband, who she brags

“is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter

who will deign [i.e. “lower himself”] to enter this

messy thing called politics.”

“We have lost the understanding that in a democracy,

we have a mutual obligation to one another —

that we cannot measure the greatness of our society

by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to

measure our greatness by the least of these,” she says.

“That we have to compromise and sacrifice for

one another in order to get things done. That is why

I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person

in this who understands that. That before we can

work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our

souls are broken in this nation.”

Barack Obama, our sole hope — the cobbler

who’ll mend our poor broken souls. With, of course,

the help of his wife Michelle.