Michelle Gets a Makeover

Understanding that Michelle Obama has become a potential liability to Barack Obama's presidential hopes, the candidate's wife is undergoing to makeover to soften her image:

Michelle Obama's eyes flicker tentatively even as she offers a trained smile. As her campaign plane arcs over the Flathead Range in Montana, she is asked to consider her complicated public image.

Conservative columnists accuse her of being unpatriotic and say she simmers with undigested racial anger. A blogger who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton circulates unfounded claims that Obama gave an accusatory speech in her church about the sins of "whitey." Obama shakes her head.

"You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be," she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: "I mean, 'whitey?' That's something that George Jefferson would say. Anyone who says that doesn't know me. They don't know the life I've lived. They don't know anything about me."

Now her husband's presidential campaign is giving her image a subtle makeover, with a new speech in the works to emphasize her humble roots and a tough new chief of staff. On Wednesday, Michelle Obama will do a guest turn on "The View," the daytime talk show on ABC, with an eye toward softening her reputation.

Her problems seemed hard to imagine last fall and winter. Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, appeared so at ease with the tactile business of campaigning and drew praise for humanizing, often with humor, a husband who could seem elusive.

Then came some rhetorical stumbles. In Madison, Wisconsin, in February, she told voters that hope was sweeping America, adding, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." Cable news shows replayed those 15 words in an endless loop of outrage.

There's already too much information on Michelle in the public media to just make her troubles go away. Everyone will see this attempt to humanize her for what it is - a campaign ploy.