That’s another term for people taking their first major swings in the big leagues — like Barack and Michelle Obama. Barack should be given credit for saving the good citizens of Illinois from the scary proposition of having Alan Keyes as their senator. That’s a worthwhile accomplishment. At some other point in time, it might not matter that the most attractive Democratic candidate who promotes change, hope and non-partisanship does so because that’s his strongest argument for himself. He can’t knock down McCain’s resume as easily as he could with Hillary’s. Forget for a minute that most of Obama’s policies break no new ground. Like Hillary, he says what his audience wants to hear. There are some hard choices the next president will have to make. Sometimes the best intentions fall short against foreign dictators and men like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, etc. The right person for the job of the presidency of the United States should know the good guys from the bad guys by their actions, not only by their words. I’m not looking for a candidate who can read the souls of foreign heads of state.

Speaking of souls, Barack’s wife Michelle said something interesting about that.

“Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls,” she said. This was a variation on her normal line that “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. “

As if it wasn’t scary enough to have Barack Obama’s big spending proposals and expansion of government bureaucracy as a threat, now we add a religious element to the mix. This is taking the role of the President to a whole different level. Michelle Obama is correct that people have broken souls, but it’s not the job of the federal government to fix broken souls. It’s not Barack’s job. It’s the responsiblity of the church.  If Michelle and Barack have this as their mission, maybe they should have chosen a different career path.

Michelle Obama could have put this a different way.  She is only trying to make the case for Barack as the candidate who will be the strongest candidate the Democrats could put up this year, and she doesn’t have much practice in this kind of bright spotlight. Mistakes were inevitable, and it’s a credit to her that it took this long to say something stupid like this, or the more controversial — “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”  Because America is hungry for change.  It was a sign of political immaturity and temporary loss of message discipline in the campaign, but not anything more serious than that. Michelle Obama doesn’t hate America.  How could she?  It has given her and her husband great opportunities to succeed, and the Obamas have taken advantage of those opportunities.

Michelle Obama is no Teresa Heinz Kerry.  She is not a loose cannon.  Democrats don’t need to worry about that (although you can be sure you will see some of those soundbites in future McCain ads).  Barack Obama will stand or fall on his own merits — which should be a more serious cause for concern than anything Mrs. Obama says.