Stu Bykofsky: When Barack met Michelle

By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

GUYS, DO YOU remember when you met your wife?

Ladies, can you say when you first laid eyes on your husband?

If so, you're one up on President Obama.

In addressing Russian collegians, Obama said (according to Politico.com), "I don't know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I'm sure that you're all going to have wonderful careers . . . ."

As anyone exposed to their Love Story knows, Barack met Michelle when he was a summer intern in a law firm where she worked.

Ooops.

"Both attended Harvard Law School, but Michelle graduated in the spring of 1988, while Barack Obama did not arrive at the Cambridge, Mass., campus until that fall," Politico reported.

How is the president's mistake even possible?

I'm older than he is and I remember where I met my wife.

All three of them.

And the president didn't?

Was he jet-lagged? I know that can happen, but Air Force One provides a very comfortable environment for battling it.

Did he just "misremember" an important moment, as when Hillary Clinton recollected landing under sniper fire at Tuzla airport in Bosnia? Seems unlikely.

Was he off TelePrompTer? (This is included solely for the enjoyment of talk radio addicts.)

Was he trying to rewrite history? I can't imagine why.

So, I asked the White House press office for clarification. The spin machine didn't reply before deadline.

Politico writer Josh Gerstein took a light approach to what he called a "stumble," suggesting that Obama's pitch-perfect performance as a spouse had given men "feelings of inadequacy."

Speak for yourself, Josh.

Just for fun, let's pretend that some other politicians had made the same inexplicable goof.

* George W. Bush. Fodder for New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for a day, David Letterman and Jon Stewart for a month. (Letterman's still making lame "John McCain is old" jokes, but his writers can't find a single thing funny about Obama.)

* Hillary Clinton. "Rush Hannity" would have a field day. They still might. (I make one personality of them as they seem to share a brain.)

* Joe Biden. You'd be hearing about the Delaware "gaffe machine" from both left and right-wing bloggers.

* Sarah Palin! The sun would literally go nova.

To me, Obama came across Clintonesque, this time meaning Bill, who had a malleable (to say the least) code of conduct that allowed him to shape reality in order to ingratiate himself with an audience.

When you're wearing pin-striped pants, that's called diplomacy. When you're wearing khakis, it's called lying. Maybe a little lie, a white lie, a cordial lie - but needing to lie to get people to like you is a pathetic character flaw.

It makes me wonder if politicians are crazy. How can they mouth any foolish thought that zips through their mind and expect that their exaggerations or falsehoods will not be detected?

I'm not talking about a simple slip of the lip, like confusing "president" and "prime minister," which Obama did, more than once.

It may seem like a small matter, but I believe Obama felt a need to "improve" on reality, and that told us a lot more than where he first met Michelle. *

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/byko.

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