The conservative National Review takes dead aim at Michelle Obama in the April issue, calling the potential First Lady for the Democrats “Mrs. Grievance.” They take exception to what they call her “narcissism and self-absorption,” saying, “she always offers a bon mot consistent with that bleak assessment she offered when saying she was ‘really proud of my country for the first time in my adult lifetime.’”

Well, we don’t really expect this particular magazine, created by William F. Buckley, Jr., to endorse the Obamas. But there is an interesting thought in Mark Steyn’s negative article.

Photograph © Landov

He writes: “Come presidential season, the Democrats prefer blind dates, while the Republicans make do with the old coot who’s been pestering them for a night out since ‘Gold Diggers of 1935.’ So the Dems nominate total unknowns — Carter, Dukakis, Clinton — while the GOP nominates fellows they know only too well: Bush 41, Dole, McCain. In the case of Barack Obama, it’s not just that he’s unknown, but that he seems eerily unknowable.”

Steyn goes on to compare Michelle Obama’s “tin ear” when it comes to populism with the same fault in the very wealthy Teresa Heinz who, when campaigning for husband John Kerry, asked at Wendy’s, "What is chili?” Then he says Michelle “spoke to a group of struggling women in economically torpid central Ohio. Michelle Obama eschewed the usual I-feel-your-pain shtick and invited the audience to feel hers, lurching into a long riff on the expense of extracurricular activities for her daughters, piano and dance and summer camp, and somehow she and Barack are expected to figure out how to pay for it on a combined salary of 500 grand a year, not including his book royalties and her corporate directorship. Nor the house they bought for $1.6 million.”

Is writer Mark Steyn just a mean Republican SOB out for the kill in case the Obamas get the nomination? Or is he onto something here? I’d like to hear your views.

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