Here we go again. After being subjected to eight years of the collegial presidency of Bill and Hillary, when we were told that when we got Bill we got Hillary as a bonus, it looks as if we are facing another twofer: Barack and Michelle.

Effete liberal Democrats are all but canonizing Barack Obama, who they see as one of their own -- cool, detached, impressively intellectual -- all in all what Pat Buchanan described as something fresh out of the faculty lounge, where lofty thoughts abound and contempt for the great unwashed is hardly concealed.

That may be an apt description, implying that the Barack Obama who scorned ordinary folks in small towns who, he sneered, cling to such lower-class crutches as religion and guns, is above the distractions of the madding crowd.

It does not, however, fit the other half of the new twofer, Michelle Obama, who far from being above it all is down there in the trenches acting like the flame-throwing liberal activist she is. To know her is to know what her husband really believes.

As I have told my listeners of my radio show, if you want to understand how Barack Obama uncomplainingly sat through all those fire-breathing sermons without so much as stirring uncomfortably you need to understand the way husbands and wives practice their religion these days.

The men in the pews for the most part are passive, while the wives tend to be passionate. In most cases husbands are there because their wives have dragged them there. Chances are that while the women sit in rapt attention to the words of their pastor, the husbands are snoozing, blissfully unaware of what the reverend is preaching.

From what we’ve heard from Mrs. Obama she was paying close attention to the Reverend Mr. Wright, eating up his fiery words and probably enthusiastically nodding agreement as he blamed whitey for inventing AIDS to kill blacks as Barack dozed beside her, wondering when the Reverend Wright was going to shut up.

Barack is now wide awake, and for the next seven months he’s going to continue to be faced with explaining why he remained silent while his pastor ranted in the pulpit. And insisting that during his presence in the pews the Reverend Wright never once acted like Reverend Wright just won’t wash. Poor Barack, how can he admit that he didn’t hear any of that rabble-rousing rhetoric because he slept through all 20 years of it?

If you want to find the culprit here, turn to Michelle. I’m willing to bet she heard every word of the Reverend Wright’s inflammatory sermons, swallowed them whole, and seethed in anger over White America’s wretched mistreatment of her fellow black Americans as described by her pastor. Continued...