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.

You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable.

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

It's not that Michelle Obama is trying to conceal her true feelings, it's that she does not want to be a political liability to her husband.

You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable. Of course when you're a candidate's wife and when you're first lady and the first African-American first lady to boot, that is very, very hard to do.

Interpreting anyone's marriage - a neighbor's, let alone the president's - is extremely difficult.

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.