Sweet on Michelle

Chicago Sun-Times/Lynn Sweet

Sweet column: Michelle Obama steps up campaign role. Rudy in Chicago.

(screenshot from Huffington Post) WASHINGTON -- Michelle Obama, an extraordinary stump speaker and potentially one of Sen. Barack Obama's most effective surrogates, is poised to step up her role in her husband's presidential campaign.

"I hate following my wife," Obama joked, speaking at a New York fund-raiser Friday night after being introduced by Michelle. When someone in the crowd yelled that Michelle should run, Obama said, "Yeah, she's too smart to run. It is true my wife is smarter, better looking. She's a little meaner than I am."

Hardly that. She is, according to spokesman Bill Burton, the "most important adviser" to the Illinois Democrat.

But with the demands of the campaign growing, Barack Obama simply can't be everywhere. John Edwards -- who hits Chicago this week for a fund-raiser -- has wife Elizabeth circulating on his behalf, and everyone knows that Hillary Rodham Clinton has a powerful helper in former President Bill Clinton.

Michelle Obama switched her University of Chicago job to part time, and the Obama campaign has tapped Melissa Winter, a veteran of two presidential campaigns, to serve as her chief of staff in the campaign's Chicago headquarters."

Where There's Smoke...

Barack Obama's incentive to try to quit smoking?
From the Chicago Tribune:

"Americans haven't elected an open and unabashed cigarette smoking president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, though others such as Lyndon Johnson smoked on occasion. The rules seem also to extend to political spouses such as First Lady Laura Bush, who found it necessary to quash her habit, or at least take it underground.

In Obama's case, the pressure isn't just political. His wife has always been concerned about his smoking and, over the holidays, according to family friend Valerie Jarrett, the two of them agreed that he "should stop now."