Michelle Obama to co-host 'The View'

By Ed Lasky

Michelle Obama to co-host next week the vastly popular The View. It will be

free advertising (not that the Obama campaign needs any) that reaches a key demographic group that has eluded the clutches of Obamamania....

Team Obama is hoping for the best. When she’s on her game, after all, Michelle is a knockout. And as one Obama booster enthuses: “Michelle’s story is a lot more mainstream American than Cindy McCain inheriting a brewery.”

But the campaign is preparing for the worst, planning to shore up Michelle with her own slick and quick war room staffed by top operatives from previous campaigns.

David Axelrod thinks “there’s a real recoil potential” if the Republicans go after Michelle. “I don’t think she’s projecting herself into the fray in a way that would justify that,” he said, adding that her charming and polite daughters, Malia and Sasha, are walking testimony to Michelle’s “loving parenting.”

Mike Murphy, the G.O.P. strategist who worked for John McCain in 2000, but not yet this year, said Michelle is heading into her “big moment in the sun.”

The Obama campaign is whistling past the graveyard if they think attacks on Michelle will not resonate with a wide swath of voters. And given her past history, it is doubtful she will be able to avoid controversy.

She’s going to take her big microphone on The View as a co-host next week, when she will no doubt try to put her remark about her belated pride in her country in context. Or she will say something equally outrageous. Loose cannons are apt to blow up on occassion.

Richard Baehr adds: This is pretty outrageous. I wonder if Cindy McCain was offered a slot? With exception of the Elizabeth Hasselback, they are all lefties.