Opinion: Barack Obama and wife, Michelle: Mutual TV appearance upcoming

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Now that Barack Obama has distanced himself publicly, if painfully, from the pastor who married him and his wife and baptized their children, he is getting close to the wife in a national television appearance.

NBC’s Meredith Vieira will sit down with Barack and Michelle Obama today in Indianapolis for an interview that will air on the ‘Today’ show Thursday. A segment of the talk will air on NBC’s ‘Nightly News’and on MSNBC this evening.

Michelle Obama has been a tireless campaigner for her husband on the road. And now, as the Democratic candidate for president attempts to put the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the campaign’s rear view mirror, he is presenting a new image for public consumption: A professional and happily married couple willing to face a rough political time together.

-- Mark Silva

Mark Silva writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau.