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Obama On "60 Minutes"

Policy discussions aside, I thought these two segments from last night were pretty winning. First, Obama on his mother-in-law:

There's no doubt that there was a sense of emotion that I could see in people's faces and in my mother-in-law's face. You know, I mean, you think about Michelle's mom, who grew up on the west and south sides of Chicago, who worked so hard to help Michelle get to where she is, her brother to be successful. She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns. And she's like my grandmother was, sort of a no-fuss type of person. And suddenly she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know, kind of squeezing it. And you had this sense of, 'Well, what's she thinking?' For a black woman who grew up in the 50s, you know, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States. I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African-Americans. I think that.

And here's Obama and Michelle on a slightly more mundane topic:

Kroft: So, you've given up the apartment in Washington that you stayed in?

Mr. Obama: I used to get teased, not just by Michelle, but by my own staff. They'd say, 'You know, you're the only senator that has a worse apartment than your 25-year-old staff people.' Eventually, I think, Secret Service kind of looked at me like, you know, once the building caught fire, and the ceiling caved in, I said…

Michelle Obama: But he moved back in anyway.

Mr. Obama: For a while.

Michelle Obama: After the fire.

Mr. Obama: Shortly.

Kroft: Did you ever stay there?

Michelle Obama: I visited, but I didn't sleep there.

Mr. Obama: She insisted on a hotel room.

Michelle Obama: I saw it. I saw it long enough to know that I wasn't gonna stay there.

Mr. Obama: Yeah

Kroft: It is one bedroom? Studio?

Mr. Obama: Yeah, it was sort of a one bedroom. It had kind of the vintage, college dorm, pizza…

Kroft: Community organizer, right?, feel to it.

Michelle Obama: It reminded me of a little better version of the apartment you were in when we first started dating. That was a dump too.

Mr. Obama: Right near Harold's Chicken Shack.

Michelle Obama:Yeah.

Mr. Obama: Yeah. That's when I had the car with the-the hole in it.

Michelle Obama: And you could see the sidewalk, because the rust had gone through.

Mr. Obama: The air-conditioning.

Michelle Obama: So that was my side. I would look and see the ground going past. And I still married him.

Mr. Obama: That's how I knew she loved me. It wasn't for my money.

Nice to have a president who can bring Harold's Chicken Shack into the national conversation.

--Noam Scheiber