I don't think it's either -- they seized on it simply to help rally their conservative base.

I don't think McCain helps himself much by having his wife in the public eye.

Alternate joke: this wouldn't be Cindy's first experience with "boosting" something.

Lymon's right: A republican can never go wrong suggesting a democrat "hates america."

I encourage Cindy "Pills" McCain to make as many public statements as possible.

I have to admit, that was definitely a stupid gaffe by Michelle though.

What this is is the GOP looking around and saying, "You know, I think we're gonna need a new Hillary." But McCain doesn't have a VP who can make this sort of attack -- paging Mean Jean Schmidt! -- so Cindy versus Michelle probably looked like a match that would avoid the appearance of piling on.

But, yeah, VC is right: John McCain is the last person not named "Rudy" who should put his wife in a shoving match with anyone. The GOP has already given us the first divorced president (Reagan) and the first president and vice president with criminal records (Bush and Cheney). So that pretty well clears the way for the GOP to stand behind the first presidential spouse with a federal rap sheet for narcotics theft. Not sure that will be so attractive outside the Republican base, however.

"I have to admit, that was definitely a stupid gaffe by Michelle though"

It might  be a fatal gaffe. Let's hope we'll find out before it's tool late.

We witness two major screw-ups by Obama and his wife in couple days.

What was Obama's major screw-up, jake?

If that counts as a fatal gaffe, then I will be retiring from the human race.

Another mantic pronouncement from Jacob.

Fatal how, pray tell?  And find out what?

"It might  be a fatal gaffe"

Ummm - no.

Plus, Hillary says stuff that's this stupid nearly once a week. It's just that the bar has been set so low for her....

Where is John McCain's dark skinned adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget?  Why isn't she on the campaign trail with John?

In his last victory speech John mentioned his family members who with him, and also mentioned those that couldn't be with him, I knew exactly who he was talking about.

You won't see her on the campaign trail with John because the McCain campaign knows just the site of a dark skinned family member will cost them a half a million votes or more.  Nor will you be seeing Condoleezza Rice offered the vice presidency on a McCain ticket.  

Condi could've run and perhaps beaten all of the Republicans, given her high approval numbers, but the RNC certainly isn't ready for a Black woman candidate, because they are still too heavily reliant upon the racist vote in the South, perhaps in another 50 years maybe, when enough of the old racist die off.  

At the moment they still prefer to have their Black women doing their laundry and cleaning up their messes, much the way Condi has.  Too bad for Condoleezza, but she doesn't really have any higher ambition anyway, that's how she made it to the position she's in today, because she's nonthreatening.  Of course anyone who has watched her in this administration must realize that she's an empty pantsuit, much like Colin Powell is an empty uniform, and that's the way the Republicans like they're Black folk, compliant and subservient, the faithful House Negro who can be trusted to run for the massas slippers and shotgun, anything else screws with their idea of the natural order of things.

In his book "The Debt," Randall Robinson wrote something that at the time I found utterly ridiculous: "Most black people don't love America." When I mentioned my incredulity to my black friends, they acted as if I was surprised that a lot of black people like jazz. I remember one co-worker saying something to the effect of, well, why should we?

Remember, Michelle Obama's background is more "traditionally" African-American than her husband's. Both her parents are slave descendants. Something tells me this isn't the last time we're going to be seeing this disconnect between the white community's almost unfettered love of all things USA and the black community's somewhat more conflicted feelings.

P.S. I think VC just gave Cindy McCain her nickname from here on out - nice work.

It would appear that with Michelle Obama's comment  "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country" and her refusal to endorse Hillary as the nominee (later backtracked), that Mrs. Clinton is not the only person with a spousal problem in this campaign. Nothing in the 230 year history of America to be proud of? The fight against Nazi Germany? The fight for civil rights, the New Deal, the war on poverty?" This from a future First Lady!  The United States has slavery and segregation in its history ,to its great shame. A lot has been accomplished, and there is a lot more to be done. Having an African-American as President would be a great source of pride for many folks, I hope. This is a country with good and bad in its history, I hope Michelle Obama reacquaints herself with the good. The best thing for the Obama campaign is to give this a short media cycle, by Michelle coming out and saying I goofed with that artless comment. You can always put the onus on Cindy, lose the swing vote, and go down to defeat in November. Ideological purity rests easy with being in a state of opposition.

boneill,

"What was Obama's major screw-up"

Obama's "just words" speech and  "Michelle's "“For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country" speech.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Hillary Clinton has rebounded among Democrats in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking average for Feb. 16-18. She is now at 45% to Barack Obama's 46%.

Clinton was seven percentage points behind Obama in the Feb. 15-17 average. In Monday night's interviewing, Clinton's percentage of the vote of national voters was higher than Obama's, but there has been fluidity in the nightly tracking numbers over the past several days as Democrats nationally process the intense, often heated, nature of the campaign. Monday's news coverage of the Democratic campaign was replete with a focus on the Clinton campaign's charges that Obama had plagiarized material from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and other negative attacks on Obama by the Clinton campaign. It is unclear which, if any, of these factors could be responsible for changes in the candidates' standing.

"The fight against Nazi Germany? The fight for civil rights, the New Deal, the war on poverty?"

Which of those things happened after 1982?

Gosh, something to make me "really proud" of my country over the last 20 years or so. Hmmm. Now if I'm Sen. Clinton perhaps I might suggest that as a represenattive of the state of New York, I was actually "really proud" of my country and its people on September 12th, 2001 among other times. But that's probably just me and I must be easy, since I'm someone who's "really proud" of my country every time I walk through an airport and see a young man or woman in uniform. I can disagree with so much our country does or doesn't do here and around the world for sure...but (apparently) ashamed of my country for all this time? Not me.  

So I don't know if it's a "fatal" gaffe, or not---no one can tell. But how about "boneheaded"? Can we agree on that?

In fairness to Michelle Obama, she didn't sy she wouldn't endorse Hillary, but that she might not be out there campaigning hard for her.  And I think most thinking people would understand where the "first time real proud of America" remark is coming from.  But look, MO needs to learn from Hillary Clinton's Tammy Wynette comment -- you gotta be a bit more careful out there.

It was a silly thing to say.  Thank God there's nobody following me around with a microphone, since I'd have no end of stupid things recorded on a daily basis.  Even smart people say stupid things.

Considering that less than nobody really cares about shit like this, I'm hard-pressed to figure out how this will be "fatal" to Obama's campaign.  Bill Clinton got himself elected, despite HIllary making some ill-advised comment about cookie-baking, if I recall correctly.

And if I could speak with Michelle Obama seriously on this, I'd mention Bill Clinton's intervention in Haitti, Bosnia and Kosovo (which just declared indepedence).  

schrek2000,

We don’t know yet. HRC’s downfall started with a short  comment about  driver licenses.

It all depends on how  the media will play this ProudGate and JustWordsGate, and what ratings they’ll get.

Agreed, Jacobt1, too soon to tell. But we'll doubtless start seeing wall to wall media coverage about whether or not Barack can "control" Michelle and whether or not she's "hurting" the campaign and whether America is ready for "Bar-Elle" and....ha, ha. Just kidding, of course.

Shreck- Michelle didn't say she was always walking around ashamed of her country, merely that she hasn't been proud of it.  Perhaps she doesn't get misty seeing troops walk around.  She wasn't calling them babykillers.   I do think that Kosovo is something to be proud of, and Bosnia, to an extent (our intervention was so, so tragically late and the Dayton Accords did little except reward ethnic expansionism by cementing Milosevic's gains- hello, Republika Srebska).   But who knows?  Maybe Michelle was too horrified by our pathological foot-dragging in Rwanda ("acts of genocide, but not genocide") too take too much pleasure in Bosnia.   I don't know.

That said, it was a dumb thing to say.  She is incredibly smart and should know better to say stuff like that when you have two camps (Hillary and McCain) waiting around to pounce and a bored media and people who have a clinical addiciton to add "Gate" to things.

Michelle can't be too horrified by our foot dragging in Rwanda given her husband's windsocking on Darfur.  "Those of us who care about Darfur (don't favor intervention)"  and "genocide is not the criteria" are not exactly anti-genocide hardline positions (of course, the candidates who stood up for Darfur were all out of the race before Super Tuesday).  In fact, Obama stopped proactively bringing up Darfur the moment he anounced his campaign. To me the most shameful figures wrt Darfur is the Congressional Black Caucus (save Charlie Rangell).  

All that said, between this and plargargate the campaign is really getting trivial!

She's only proud now that her husband is running?

Not too self-interested and narcissistic, are we?

Imagine the video of this if he is the candidate in the Fall.

Michele Obama is also the one who when asked if she would support Hillary if she were the candidate said that she would have to think about it. Nice. Exactly how narrow is the interest groups that she supports? Her own immediate family?

Given that there appear to be a lot of folks who seem to think that WE should be proud of the United States just because THEY happened to be born into it (lucky USA!), Michelle's comment suggests a realistic assessment by a black woman who has seen a lot of hidden racist assumptions surviving under the surface of modern America.

That doesn't mean it won't be turned against Barack, though.  Oh yes -- the issue of blacks who of course don't love America.  When the attack gets under way, the generations of African-Americans who fought (and died) for this country even when they were subject to vicious and mean-spirited prejudice and hostility at home won't count at all.  I wonder why.  Oh yes, I forgot -- the Repugs still have a closet white supremacist constituency that needs to be activated.

Just as a side note, I find that many people who are so all-fired proud morning noon and night are the same people who are really bemused that e.g. the French, the Iranians, and the Russians are proud of their countries too.

lymon- touche, regarding Darfur.  Though I would add that it is Michelle doing the talking here.  

Irony - you've obviously not spent much time in France or Russia. As dispirited and divided and disgusted as the French or Russians may be with their own countries, I've never heard a Frenchman say he's ashamed to be French, or a Russian say he's ashamed to be Russian. Neither have I seen such sentiments in print or heard them on the radio. It's just not done there.

Only in America do people say they're ashamed of their nationality, vow to emigrate to Canada if their guy doesn't win the election, burn the flag, and belittle or even trash the country's legitimate and indisputable achievements. Very weird.

tep -- did you miss my point?

Irony - you set up a straw man, which I ignored. No one expects Michelle Obama to be "proud morning noon and night", or proud of the US simply because she was born here, etc. The criticism isn't about the absence of an Always-Proud, as you frame it, but the presence of a Never-Proud.

Whether from sheer stupidity or something else, the woman went out of her way to make clear that she had never felt proud of the US prior to her husband's run for the presidency. Narcissistic, silly, irritating, weird.

Your opinion may differ, and I'm happy to let this thing end here, but please dispense with the straw men.

I don't like Patriotically-Correct morons any more than you do. But I also happen to loathe PC sentiments of the America Sucks variety, and this statement oozes that very sensibility.

rgds,

t