Obama warns critics against taking jabs at his wife, family

Michelle Obama is, as her husband the presidential hopeful often says, a strong woman. But Barack Obama warned Republicans yesterday not to attack her.

The Tennessee GOP last week posted an online video hitting Michelle Obama for a comment that foes called unpatriotic. While campaigning in February, she declared, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country."

She later clarified the remark, saying that she was proud of how Americans were taking part in politics and that she had always been proud of her country.

Sitting next to her in an interview aired yesterday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Obama said: "The GOP, should I be the nominee, can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family."

Obama called his wife the best person he knows and said she "loves this country. For them to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her is, I think, just low class. I think that most of the American people would think that as well."

In response, the Republican National Committee sent an example of the Democratic National Committee criticizing Cindy McCain for not releasing her tax returns, noting that Obama said nothing at the time.

FOON RHEE

NEW YORK - The White House called on NBC News yesterday to set the record straight on what it called "deceitful" editing of an interview with President Bush, in which he was asked whether comments about appeasement were directed at Senator Barack Obama.

NBC stood by its reporting of the interview.

Bush aides were angered by the portrayal of the president's answer to a question about his condemnation of "the false comfort of appeasement" in an address last week to the Israeli Knesset. "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush had said in Jerusalem last week.

Obama's campaign considered that statement an attack on him, which the White House has denied.

Correspondent Richard Engel asked Bush whether he was referring to Obama in his speech.

As it appeared on "Nightly News" Sunday and the "Today" show yesterday, Bush's response was: "You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has . . . And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously."

But the White House said NBC edited out these words that Bush said between those two sentences: "People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was that we need to take the words of people seriously."

Bush counsel Ed Gillespie, in a letter to NBC News president Steve Capus, said that "this deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

It's a Wikipedia age, so Democrats launched their version yesterday, focused on presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

"McCainpedia" is an electronic compendium of research on McCain that, like Wikipedia, allows anyone to use it or share it in any way the person choose. It includes articles on the economy and other issues, and features one item on Iraq.

"While the base of the Republican Party continues to shrink, Democrats are growing our ranks by trusting the American people with the facts of John McCain's own record," Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. "McCainpedia provides the kind of transparency that John McCain would rather avoid and empowers millions of people to review McCain's inconsistencies and make up their own minds about Senator McCain."

FOON RHEE

WASHINGTON - President Bush will help Republican John McCain raise money later this month in Arizona. Beyond that, the White House isn't saying how much the two will campaign together.

Bush, who has not been with McCain since a Rose Garden formal endorsement on March 5, will appear with the Arizona senator at a fund-raiser May 27 in Phoenix.

The White House said the president will actively hit the trail in support of Republican candidates despite his low approval ratings and questions about whether his presence would help or hurt the likely GOP nominee.

"The president believes very strongly that, if we get out and take our message to voters, that we can be successful," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

ASSOCIATED PRESS