Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jennifer wrote a piece about Michelle Obama on the campaign trail and quoted her as saying:

At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part “to model what it means to have family values,” adding “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.” She didn’t elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.

That one statement in the entire article got a lot of press, with people surmising she was specifically talking about the Clintons.

Today she has a piece up that talks about the controversy surrounding her first piece.

But in the fifth paragraph of the story, I suggested that during an introduction to a speech by her husband, something she said could be interpreted as a swipe against the Clintons, and that set the tongues wagging, hit Drudge’s Web site, was discussed on CNN, ABC and MSNBC and prompted an e-mail from Michelle Obama’s communications director, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, who said I had completely misunderstood what Michelle Obama had said.

This is from Michelle Obama’s introduction to her husband’s speech: “. . . part of what we want to do as a family is to make sure that our children are sane, but also to model what it means to have family values in this country, and we haven’t seen that for a long time . . . [applause].

“One of the most important things that we need to know about the next president of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values, is he somebody that respects family, is a good and decent person? So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.

“So we’ve adjusted our schedule to make sure that our girls are first, so when he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning. I get the girls ready. I get them off. I go and do trips. I’m home before bedtime.”

Lelyveld told me in a phone conversation that Michelle Obama “was only referring to her family and making sure her girls are guided and strong.” It was not a jab at the Clintons, Lelyveld said.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Barack Obama told the Associated Press that his wife “has been making that speech constantly about the decision we made to make sure that our family was strong because if our family wasn’t that strong then we couldn’t be a strong leader in the White House.”

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

…

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

OK, but as I stood there in Atlantic, Iowa, listening to Michelle Obama talk and hearing the cadence of her speech, my immediate reaction was that she was obliquely referring to the Clintons.

Why did I think that?

Well, she said she and Barack were modeling “what it means to have family values in this country and we haven’t seen that for a long time” [emphasis added]. Wasn’t Bush the family values guy? What did Michelle mean by “we haven’t seen that [family values] for a long time”?

Then she talked about the future president being someone who “respects family . . .” Did Bill Clinton show respect for his family with his bimbo eruptions? Did he consider the impact on his child, let alone his wife?

Michelle Obama added: “So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”

Bang!

The Clintons certainly did have a hard time running the White House and their own house during the Monica Lewinsky affair as independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his henchmen began snooping around and President Clinton was impeached by Congress.

So you can see where I was going with this. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic. My mistake was not grabbing Michelle Obama when she left to ask for further elaboration — I was waiting to hear her husband speak.

When public people speak they should be clear in what they are saying so there is no doubt about the meaning of their words.

Michelle Obama may have been tired and not expressed herself fully, or she may have meant it the way it sounded.

It’s up to the individual to decide, but we have had family values in the White House for the last almost seven years at least. There has been no scandal regarding this president or his family, except when his girls were partying while they were in college, and many college kids do that. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s not a scandal. At least not in my eyes.