This is personal: Michelle Obama

The US presidential election is not just about political issues, “it’s personal”, Barack Obama’s wife Michelle said today.

Mrs Obama injected a more reflective tone into the race for the White House as she stood in for the Democratic presidential nominee while he visited his gravely ill grandmother in Hawaii.

Leaving the campaign trail just 11 days before the election is a highly-unusual and risky move, but most US political pundits agreed Mr Obama had no choice after the health of 85-year-old Madelyn Payne Dunham, who raised him, suddenly deteriorated earlier this week.

In his place, Mrs Obama addressed the significance of the race at a rally in the key battleground state of Ohio and suggested she was counting down the days to November 4.

She said the fight for the American Dream, and issues including the economy, healthcare, education, the Iraq war and the environment, were “not just political issues”.

“This isn’t about politics, this is personal,” she said.

“It’s personal for me, and I know it’s personal for every single one of us in this place.”

Speaking in Columbus, she said it had been “an amazing year-and-a-half for us and it has been fun to watch this country in action”.

Young people were “finding their voices for the first time” and “some not-so-young folks... (were) saying that for the first time they feel like they have to be involved,” she said.

“Sometimes with tears streaming down their faces, they will say, ’I never thought I would live to see the day’.

“That is some powerful stuff and that’s been our experience over this year.”

The 44-year-old mother-of-two added: “All this that’s been going on this year has everything to do with my husband, because you know I think he’s great.

“The truth is that he would be the first to tell you, and he said it when he first announced, he said this race is not about him, will never be.

“He said this race is about all of us, all of you, the millions of you who are going above and beyond, fighting, working hard, believing and being a part of building what has become a movement for change.

“I know in my heart, with no hesitation, that he will be an extraordinary president. That I know.

“But I also come here as a mum, you know those little girls, those little people – they are the light of our lives, they are the reason why I breathe in and out, like any parent I am only as good as they are.

“I know I’m not unique, we all feel that way about our children.

“So for me, and so many of us, it is their future that is at stake in this election.”

Mrs Obama also told the crowd that her husband’s grandmother was “doing OK” and thanked well-wishers saying “it means so much to us”.

She said her husband had told her he got his “toughness” from Mrs Dunham.

“She taught him with that quiet confidence and that love and support, that he could do anything, just deep love and admiration,” Mrs Obama said.

As Mr Obama became the first African American presidential nominee of a major US political party, he paid tribute to his grandmother, who turns 86 on Sunday.

The 47-year-old Illinois senator also referred to her in his high-profile speech on race earlier this year as he called for a “more perfect union” in the US.

Mr Obama also won the endorsement of Scott McClellan, Republican President George Bush’s former press secretary, and that of the New York Times today.

He is expected to return to the campaign trail in Nevada tomorrow.

As his Republican rival John McCain held a series of rallies in Colorado, the McCain campaign also released an advert which attacked Mr Obama’s inexperience.

“The ad highlights Joe Biden – Barack Obama’s own running-mate – guaranteeing an international crisis if Barack Obama is elected,” a McCain campaign spokesman said.

“Because of Barack Obama’s inexperience, Joe Biden has guaranteed the American people that the world will test Barack Obama within the first six months of being elected.”

At the end of the advert, which will air in key states, the announcer says: “It doesn’t have to happen. Vote McCain.”.