People know that Barack Obama is a powerful speaker. What is less known is that Michelle Obama is equally articulate.

That's helpful when you're a wife trying to project the credibility to convince people to vote and work for your husband in his race for president.

Despite the sky high ideals Obama has made the centerpiece of his campaign — hope, change, unity — Michelle Obama got the biggest reactions from the crowd at the Salt Palace when she discussed with humor the life of a campaign spouse.
Of particular interest to a Utah crowd is how she and the Obama daughters are holding up.

"We are fine. The girls are good. They care nothing about what we are doing — still," she said — then turned the laughter to the issue at hand. "When I am on the road, I think about them endlessly. We are doing this for them. Any level of passion that you hear in my voice or see in my carriage is because I'm thinking about the world we are gong to hand over to these little kids you see running around in the back." (And this being Utah, there was no shortage of little kids running around.)

Once Michelle Obama connected, she started in on a dangerous subject for a presidential candidate: What is wrong with Americans? (Remember Jimmy Carter's disastrous, if frank, speech on the nation's "malaise"?)

Michelle Obama said Americans are too isolated from each other and have embraced a "culture of mean."

"We are still a nation that is still too cynical. We've been burned so much. We've been disappointed so much," she said.

Again, to the matter at hand, "You're asking yourselves, 'Is [Obama] who he says he is?' It's the cynicism we are battling."

After assuring the audience that though she loves her husband, she "is not drinking the Kool-aid," Michelle Obama says her husband "is the only one who can help us heal."