Poor Michelle

Barack is engaging in the old kinda politics again, trying to create standard left/right polarity - the opposite of trying to bring us together.

Senator Obama is blaming the news media — and especially FOX News — for Michelle Obama's high negative ratings. Just under 30 percent of those polled had an unfavorable view of Michelle Obama in our last FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll. A Rasmussen Reports poll last month put her unfavorable rating at 42 percent.

Ya, the Obamas are victims! It's not their fault that they let Michelle go out onto the campaign trail and talk about how the U.S. isn't a very nice place.

Obama tells Glamour magazine that political spouses should be off-limits. He says the "conservative press — FOX News... went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way... spouses are civilians. They didn't sign up for this."

Some do, and some don't. Those that advertise their disdain for the country are at the top of the sign up list. Those that mind their business and stay in the background, like Cindy McCain, they have a bigger right to be left alone.

Though Obama failed to mention it, his wife has made a number of official campaign stops with him and has even campaigned for him on her own.

When you're a practitioner of the old fashioned politics, being forthright isn't part of the equation. He's just looking for the wedge.

Obama then added, "If you start being subjected to rants by Sean Hannity and the like, day in day out, that'll drive up your negatives."

There's a safe bet for mobilizing liberals - bring out the old demon Sean Hannity.

But the recent Newsweek poll shows that Michelle is doing just fine with voters, despite her comments on her country, so this whole thing is just posturing, anyway. Making Barack look like a tough, protective patriarch. Who's going to think ill of him for doing a little Harry Truman routine?

The Newsweek poll found that voters thought Obama would make a better First Lady than McCain by a 31% to 25% margin.

That surprising figure suggests a possible reversal in a trend that has favored more traditional, Republican First Ladies. At this point in the 1996 campaign, voters preferred Elizabeth Dole over Hillary Clinton by 14points, and in 2004, they preferred Laura Bush over Teresa Heinz Kerry by 20 points.