Sarah Palin is not the only woman at the heart of the US presidential election. So how do the first-lady candidates differ? Fresh interviews on the two women offer an insight, writes Rosita Bolandin Boston
WHAT ARE BILLED as exclusive interviews with both Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain this week throw fresh light on both first ladies in waiting, with questions on race yielding the most revealing answers.
The interviews were published on Thursday in the American edition of Good Housekeeping (most of whose 26 million readers are women). By the time the next edition of the magazine appears on the news-stands, one of these women will no longer be in waiting.
Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain's public profile during the past month has been significantly reduced by the third woman of the moment - Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has been hoovering up media coverage everywhere. Palin has so dominated recent coverage that it seems unlikely that anyone will now go to the polls to vote either for Barack Obama or John McCain without also carrying the images of three very different American women in their head, one of whom will have a significant future public role.
When asked in the Good Housekeeping interview, "Do you think that this election has changed how we think about race?", Cindy McCain said: "I think it's a phenomenal age of politics because there are many firsts in this race. But I don't think it has changed - nor should it change - the way people look at race. I think Americans are good-hearted, open-minded people and race doesn't enter into this - at all."
Pressed further and asked did she think race is not at all a factor in the presidential race, McCain replied: "No, I really don't believe it is. Yes, you know, Mr Obama is an African-American man, and yes, we're Irish. And isn't that wonderful? It's a wonderful thing for America. So I really don't think race plays a part."
When asked the same questions, Michelle Obama said: "I think absolutely it has. We are talking about issues that we have never talked about before out in the open. The good and the bad. I think that at least for the kids I know - not just African-American kids - seeing different images of what is possible means something."
She added: "So many kids - because of their race, their economic background, or where they live - don't see themselves [reflected in the world]. And when kids don't see themselves, they don't see their possibilities. As young people have watched Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama being treated as serious, viable candidates - people who could be president of the United States - it changes everything."
There was much more in her answer, and she didn't need to be asked the question a second time.
The day the magazine appeared on the news-stands, African American Kandi Bennett was stacking books in the Coop bookshop in Cambridge, Boston. She did not agree with McCain's view that race does not play a part in this election. "Racism is still not over in this country," she said softly. "It will never go away. I already hurt enough. Cindy McCain is rich - rich beyond rich. But it is still hard for African-Americans in America to support their families."
MUCH PUBLIC AND private discussion of the Obamas lately has involved flipping a Sarah Palin situation, and looking at it from a racial perspective. Byron York in the National Review said: "If the Obamas had a 17-year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families."
There has been no major controversy surrounding either woman during the campaign. Cindy McCain's former addiction to painkillers surfaced, but in a country where pharmacies routinely have several aisles loaded with a staggering array of painkillers and where people carry Advil like car keys and wallets, this issue is not seen by the American public as unusual or shameful.
WHAT IS POTENTIALLY toxic in a country ultra-sensitive about its continued presence in Iraq is any hint of being unpatriotic. Michelle Obama caused a stir in February when she spoke unscripted in Milwaukee and commented: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."
The Republicans immediately howled their gleeful vocal outrage. A couple of hours later Obama spoke again in Madison, and revised her words: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."
But the comment has stayed around to haunt the campaign, and she has apparently never been allowed to speak unscripted again.
Asked by Good Housekeeping if she regretted the comment, Obama replied: "It's a mischaracterisation that has nothing to do with the intended statement."
There's very little controversy about anything Cindy McCain says, because until very recently she was saying nothing at all. There's an inscrutable quality to her public appearances, where she comes off as chilly and reserved. Then again, it is difficult to see into the soul of someone worth multiples of inherited millions.
In the US, when people are as wealthy as Cindy McCain, they usually buy privacy with it. No wonder she frequently has problems smiling to the cameras.
"I saw written someplace that people thought I was kind of like a Stepford wife, and that couldn't be further from the truth," she told Good Housekeeping. "Just because I choose to be a little less overt out on the campaign doesn't mean I'm anything less than very opinionated and very intelligent."
If Cindy McCain considers herself very intelligent, then there is no doubt that Michelle Obama is very, very intelligent, with degrees from both Princeton and Harvard Law School to prove it. As a potential first lady, she is the self-made American dream. She wasn't born into inherited wealth, like Cindy McCain, yet she went to elite universities, and has a family, as well as a career which she has put on hold to take care of her two daughters for the duration of the presidential campaign. Oh, and she's black.
"Race is the unspoken part of this election, all the time," New Yorker Renee Santalo said on Thursday, walking to the local subway stop along Peabody Street in Cambridge with her friend Kacey Morris. "I'm a woman and the best representation that women get in presidential campaigns is the first lady. That's all we get. We haven't had a woman run for president yet. But the unspoken bit is that Michelle Obama is black, and might be first lady. She is sending out a message just by being black. And so maybe the next time a black woman is in the campaign, people will be more used to the idea of it, and race will be less of the issue it is now."
The pollsters here know it is a historic and proven fact that Americans lie consistently about race in elections, which is making this election a uniquely difficult one to predict.
Nobody wants to be accused of being racist, so even if they don't agree with the policies of the black candidate, they won't tell the pollsters that. Barack Obama might be ahead in the polls right now, but what does that really mean?
Meanwhile, Cindy McCain does not believe that this election has changed how Americans think about race: Michelle Obama does. One of them will be proved right on November 4th.