So far this cycle, the Tennessee Republican Party hasn’t found a line it wasn’t happy to cross. In February, it sent out an incendiary press release that accused Barack Obama of anti-Semitism, linked him to Louis Farrakhan and insinuated that a shot of the senator in traditional Somali garb showed his true “Muslim” colors–instead of simply showing the Christian Obama engaging, as it did, in a bit of ceremonial politeness during a Congressional visit to Kenya. The national party denounced its Volunteer State wing, saying that they “reject these kind of campaign tactics”; John McCain condemned the release and apologized to Obama. And late last week it released a web ad mocking Michelle Obama for infamous remarks about being “proud” of her country for the first time–the party’s way, it said, of “welcoming” her to Tennessee.
Again, the reaction from Obama was swift and stinging. Appearing yesterday on ABC’s Good Morning America, the candidate, clenched and caustic, praised his wife’s patriotism and called the GOP tactic “low class” and “detestable.” “If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful,” he said. “Because that I find unacceptable. To try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class … and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable.”
Whoa, nelly. Obama’s warning–a macho display of “don’t lay a glove on my girl” bravado–sounds great, in a Marlon Brando circa 1954 sort of way. But the reality here is a bit more complicated. Since the start of the senator’s presidential bid, Michelle Obama has spent nearly as much time on the trail as he has–and, like him, she’s not handing out cupcakes. Sent before the audiences most susceptible to her appeal (women and African-Americans, mostly), Michelle is inarguably participating in the rough-and-tumble political process–unlike, say, Cindy McCain, who doesn’t stump on her husband’s behalf. For the Obama campaign to reap the rewards of this arrangement (i.e., the voters that Michelle wins over) without shouldering the risk (i.e., the voters she turns off) is a little lily-livered. Her remarks are calibrated to win votes for her husband–so they can logically be used to steer votes away from him, too. Should the GOP go digging for dirt in Michelle’s past? Absolutely not. But what she says in the political area is fair game. Just ask Bill Clinton.
That said, Obama’s howitzer-caliber response–clearly meant to frame any additional attacks, however justifiable, as an assault on an innocent American family–obscures the larger problem with the Tennessee GOP’s anti-Michelle onslaught: it’s not exactly accurate. In the ad–and in most journalistic accounts, to be fair–Michelle is quoted as saying, “For the first time in my adult life, I’m proud of my country.” But later that same day (Feb. 18) she actually said something slightly different: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Without “really,” Mrs. Obama sounds as if she were never proud of America before; with it, she’s simply prouder than she’s been in the past. Michelle has repeatedly explained that it’s not the country itself that she wasn’t “proud” of, but rather the way the country has conducted its political process. A simple little “really” makes her seem a lot less like the “out-of-touch, anti-American elitist” of Republican fantasies–and a whole lot more like the 99 percent of us who aren’t particularly pleased with the denizens of Washington, D.C.
Which is why, of course, the Tennessee GOP–and the rest of the Republican attack machine–will keep harping on the “really”-less speech. Instead of saying Michelle is off-limits–which, after all, just makes him look naive and hypersensitive–Obama might want to try explaining what she actually said. That is, if it isn’t too late.
