Marc Ambinder ponders this bit of campaign trivia:
Does Barack Obama believe that he can have his wife campaign for him in public and then also claim anything she says is out of bounds?
I’m sure he doesn’t believe it. To a certain extent, that extent being what she says on the campaign trail, I think that attacking any of Michelle Obama’s statements is fair political game for the McCain campaign or for the GOP in general.
That said, fair or not, Obama telling the GOP to “lay off his wife” just demonstrates old fashioned campaign savvy–it’s a no-brainer retort and scores easy political points. It’s the campaign equivalent of making a slam dunk when you’ve made a fast break into an open court. No matter how much his political rivals protest afterwards, they’re going to come across to the vast majority of people as unfair and sleazy, despite the fact that what they’re doing may well be legitimate. Frankly, Obama would have been an idiot not to do so after the first anti-Michelle Obama ads came out.
