Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Swamp:

Just last month, Michelle Obama was remarking at a fundraiser for her husband, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: “In the past week or two, another candidate’s spouse has been getting an awful lot of attention.’’

Not any more.

It is no longer Bill Clinton, husband of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is drawing the headlines. This is, in part, by design, following a spate of comments by the former president that may have hurt his wife’s candidacy more than his own continuing appeal on the campaign trail helped.

It is now Michelle Obama who, with her own comments in recent weeks, may also have created more controversy than comfort for her husband’s candidacy.

Last week, the Illinois senator’s wife complained in Ohio that opponents are invoking the candidate’s middle name – Hussein, the birth-given name of his Kenyan grandfather – as a political wedge aimed at instilling ethnic hostility. The name, she said, serves as “the ultimate fear bomb’’ in the contest between Obama and Clinton.

Earlier this month, campaigning for her husband in Wisconsin, Michelle Obama declared: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” She probably would have said that a little differently, had she had another chance. “I’ve got to be careful not to be the story,’’ she told a reporter aboard her campaign bus. “Because it becomes a distraction to the broader issues.”

The question, for Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, may be how much distraction from the broader issues they have created at critical junctures in the campaign – or whether Michelle Obama has helped focus voters on some of the underlying cultural dynamics in this titanic contest.