Michelle Obama is somebody who really wants to take the high road.

The Michelle Obama that her old friends remember, that people knew in Chicago, she was a really incisive social critic. She knew how to drive an argument home. People liked her both in the workplace and socially because she was so frank.

Michelle Obama has mostly stuck to pretty anodyne topics. She's anti-childhood obesity, she's pro-veteran.

Candidates' wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands' appearances.

Michelle Obama is somebody who really wants to take the high road.

Every presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romneys is backed by the Mormon belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired.

People who face too many demands - two careers, two children - often scale back somehow. The Obamas scaled up.