For the 16 years they have been married, Michelle Obama has been Barack Obama's closest advisor, second only to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Should Obama be elected, his presidency promises to be another two-fer. In case you have any doubts, columnist Robert Novak reports that Hillary Clinton will not be offered the vice presidency, because Michelle Obama has nixed the very thought.

Since Michelle Obama, a Harvard-educated attorney, will be a shadow president it's time to examine her worldview. For one thing, Michelle Obama needs to be reminded why she should be proud of America, after all those years drinking in the Rev. Jeremiah White’s hateful, anti-American vitriol. (BTW, have you ever noticed that even when her face is in repose you can tell Michelle Obama is one pissed off, resentful – yes, bitter - woman? She always looks like she's just this close to biting your head off.)

Radio talk show host Michael Reagan writes, “[t]o know her is to know what her husband really believes”:

From what we’ve heard from Mrs. Obama she was paying close attention to the Reverend Mr. Wright, eating up his fiery words and probably enthusiastically nodding agreement as he blamed whitey for inventing AIDS to kill blacks as Barack dozed beside her, wondering when the Reverend Wright was going to shut up. …

Poor Barack, how can he admit that he didn’t hear any of that rabble-rousing rhetoric because he slept through all 20 years of it?

If you want to find the culprit here, turn to Michelle. I’m willing to bet she heard every word of the Reverend Wright’s inflammatory sermons, swallowed them whole, and seethed in anger over White America’s wretched mistreatment of her fellow black Americans as described by her pastor.

So here’s what Michelle Obama – and, presumably, her husband – believe about America and Americans: that we’re ignorant, fearful, isolated, insular, timid and can never hope to succeed because we’re getting screwed all the time – and we’re teaching our kids that they can’t succeed, either:

† A speech in Columbia, SC, January 23, 2008

“We don't like being pushed outside of our comfort zones. You know it right here on this campus. You know people sitting at different tables, y'all living in different dorms. I was there. Y'all not talking to each another, taking advantage of the fact that you're in this diverse community because sometimes it's easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your ignorance. That's America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?"

† An interview with Katie Couric on the “CBS Evening News,” February 15, 2008:

KC: As an African American, you gave a very impassioned speech in South Carolina about meeting Coretta Scott King and the impact that had on you. … what would it mean to you to have an African American President of the United States?

MO: I spoke to that audience I also talked a lot about fear, because in this country we spend more time worrying about what we can't do, what won't happen, what won't change. And there is so much fear that ties us down in this country, not just in the African American community but in all communities. … We're worried about fairness and whether we're gonna get lost in the shuffle. And sometimes we make decisions based on that fear and that fear only and we don't look at the possibility. We don't think in terms of what we can move forward and how we have the power to control our own destinies because we're locked in that fear.

† A speech in Charlotte, NC, May 2, 2008:

[W]e’re still living in a nation, and in a time when … [t]hey say look, if you do these things, you can get to this bar, right? And then you work and you struggle, you do everything that they say, and you think you’re getting close to the bar and you’re working hard, and you’re sacrificing, and then you get to the bar, you’re right there, you’re reaching out for the bar, you think you have it, and then what happens? They move the bar. They raise it up. They shift it to the left and to the right. It’s always just quite out of reach. …

And folks are struggling like never before, working harder than ever, believing that their hard work will lead to some reward, some payoff. But what they find is that they get there and the bar has changed, things are different, wasn’t enough. So you have to work even harder.

[W]hen you live in a nation where the vast majority of Americans are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that nation is that people do become isolated. …

And when you live in a nation where people are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that kind of nation is that people are afraid, because when your world’s not right, no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don’t know who’s fault it is, why you can’t get a handle on life, why you can’t secure a better future for your kids. … [F]ear creates this veil of impossibility, and it is hanging over all of our heads … our fear is helping us to raise a nation of young doubters, young people who are insular and they’re timid. And they don’t try, because they already heard us tell them why they can’t succeed.

What a depressing, Dickensian view of America and its people. Most of us – particularly those whose forebears immigrated here - think of our country the way Neil Diamond described it in this song from “The Jazz Singer”:

Everywhere around the world
They're coming to America
Every time that flag's unfurled
They're coming to America

Got a dream to take them there
They're coming to America
Got a dream they've come to share
They're coming to America

To Americans whose families escaped natural and state-engineered famines; communism, fascism and totalitarianism; or pogroms, genocide, civil war and sectarian violence, America is as close to Paradise as we will ever get on this Earth. And Michelle Obama will never convince us otherwise, no matter how much she whines about how long it took her and her husband to pay off the student loans for their Ivy-league educations.

Editorial Note: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd debates the issue, “So how does Obama repay Hillary for running a campaign designed both to unman him and brand him as an unelectable black? Is the most ingenious way to turn the screw by not choosing her as his running mate, or by choosing her?”

There are good political arguments to be made on both sides, but should Obama choose Hillary as his veep, The Stiletto strongly urges him to hire a food taster.

When Is Military Intervention Justified?
 

In January 1990, The New York Times ran an op-ed, titled “Are Invasions Sometimes O.K?” that examined whether U.S. military intervention in Burma to rescue its people from a brutal regime – which The Times dug up from its archives and republished in the   “hope [it] sheds light on current news or provides a window on the past”:

Human rights abuses, wherever they might occur, are no longer accepted as business as usual. …

Can anyone really argue that we should grant any government - no matter how brutal or how unpopular - the right to terrorize or kill its citizens for as long as it can cling to power? …

In reporting on the 1988 revolt, I came to understand that the smallest gesture of U.S. military support - perhaps nothing more than a couple of battleships off the Burmese coast and a few warplanes over its skies - could have won the day for the Burmese people. …

In such clear-cut cases, would military intervention on human rights grounds be morally justified? If it is, a second question must be posed: How could the principle of big-power intervention on behalf of human rights be established without a future American or Soviet government perverting it to prop up, as in the past, repressive dictatorships? Could some effective international control mechanism be worked out - a Helsinki Accord with teeth?

Note that liberals generally favor of using our military might for humanitarian purposes – as does The Stiletto, by the way – but not for advancing our geopolitical interests or protecting our national security. Lest anyone forget, one of the reasons the U.S. invaded Iraq the second time around was to stop Saddam Hussein and his sicko sons Uday and Qusay from feeding political opponents into a wood chipper – the weapons of mass destruction, were in fact, only one factor in our decision to invade Iraq and not finding them in no way negates all the other reasons we had to take Saddam out.