Here's an article that has more excerpts from Michelle Obama's "Tired of being afraid" speech. This article includes additional comments from Mrs. Obama about her husband's presidential campaign:


"Harvard-educated lawyer Michelle Obama says she never imagined herself in Council Bluffs, Iowa, pumping up a crowd of supporters on a hot August day.

But the 43-year-old Chicago mother of two and former corporate lawyer has thrown herself into the campaign to get her husband Barack elected U.S. president in 2008, after years of keeping a low profile.

She says it was a hard decision.

"This wasn't an easy decision for us because we've got two beautiful little girls and we have a wonderful life, and everything was going fine," she told several hundred supporters this week in a school gymnasium here.

"And nothing would have been more disruptive than choosing to run for president of the United States."

Her deepening involvement in Obama's campaign comes as several other candidates' spouses take unusually high-profile, combative roles in the presidential race.

Elizabeth Edwards has emerged as a tenacious partner in her husband John's campaign to beat Obama to the Democratic nomination while Hillary Clinton's husband Bill needs no introduction to voters who elected him president twice.

Michelle Obama has become increasingly passionate on the campaign trail, as she introduces her husband and in separate gatherings she has with supporters.

"I'm tired of being afraid," she said to rousing applause at the small rural town of Council Bluffs in western Iowa, the state where the nomination process kicks off.

"I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we've made over the last 10 years wasn't for something that we believed in but because we feared something."

"ALL FIRED UP"

She introduced her husband as "the man who I love, who I'd rather have at home with me ... but who I'm willing to sacrifice, because we have ... a chance to make something real happen, something positive happen, to live beyond our fear."

"My wife got all fired up," said Obama, who is running second to Clinton in most Democratic national polls.

Supporters crowd around Michelle after her husband's stump speech, and she takes time to hear their stories, answer their questions, and urge them to vote for Obama.

She said she had never imagined being up on a stage in a presidential campaign.

"No, absolutely not. Absolutely not," she said in an interview in a coffee shop in the central Iowa town of Grinnell.

"I am very passionate about change in the country and that's what you see."

"I am really worried that we won't make the right decision this time around. And I'm really going to put everything that I have into making sure that people understand what's at stake and that we are thinking with our heads and not with fear."

Obama said she and her husband are struggling to minimize the impact the campaign has on their two daughters, Malia, 9 and Sasha, 6.

"We worry about it all the time. We really try to structure it so they're not on the road a lot," she said. "They're on it when they have breaks and vacation and they want to come."

Malia and Sasha were with their parents on a three-day bus tour of Iowa this week. They rode at the head of the motorcade, playing card games to pass the time.

In a stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, the girls got a taste of the huge media crush that follows their father when they got stuck in the middle of a swarm of reporters.

"There are aspects that are probably a bit tedious for them," said Michelle, adding that she and the girls had a "blast" at the fair once the media left with Barack."

Published: August 18, 2007

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