I have great admiration for any woman who is willing to sacrifice her career for that of her husband's, and despite her husband's many campaign missteps, Michelle Obama's feisty spirit and charm have won my approval. But does she go too far in this Chicago campaign appearance, subtly reminding voters of Hillary Clinton's problematic personal life? I am not sure. To borrow some expressions of the day, I am torn between two reactions to this clip -- one being "oh, SNAP!" and the other being "OH NO SHE DIT'NT."

Last week, Barack Obama announced his intention, if elected president, of bringing US troops to the Pakistan border if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf did not take appropriate actions to prevent future al-Qaida attacks. Hillary Clinton didn't condemn this statement at the time, but after American flags were burned in Pakistan following the remarks, she changed her tune, and at last night's AFL-CIO debate, she let loose her full wrath on Obama and his big talk.

"I think it is a very big mistake to... destabilize the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamic extremists who are in bed with al-Qaida and the Taliban," Clinton said. She then unleashed this soundbite, the gist of which seems to be: "maybe if you're a little one-term senator without much foreign policy experience, you should keep your big trap shut."

Obama struck back at Clinton and fellow critic Chris Dodd (who both voted for the Iraq invasion)by saying, "I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the worst policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure we are on the right battlefield."

Ouch.

Dodd quickly replied with, "I know you are, but what am i?" Okay, no, not really. But stay tuned.

In both physics and politics, it's a given that with every action a reaction is sure to occur. But while in physics the reaction is equal and opposite, that's never a guarantee in politics.

This response to the Hillary Clinton 1984 pastiche lacks the subtle build of double-speak that made the original video so interesting. And the digital effects used here to integrate footage into Ridley Scott's groundbreaking commercial for Apple Computers are extremely amateurish, especially in comparison to the original.

While it's fantastic that YouTube enables the common man to participate in the national discourse, we can only hope that the creator of this video considers, perhaps, finding an original way to communicate his point. And maybe learning how to use After Effects, while he's at it.

The junior senator from Illinois isn't exactly diving headfirst into his now-inevitable 2008 presidential campaign, but by announcing today that he'll be forming an "exploratory committee" (a definitive move towards running), he certainly seems to have waded in up to his knees.

This personal, direct appeal to the Internet generation is the sort of eloquent speech-making that helped skyrocket the man into the national spotlight after his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. And we'd be liars if we said that we didn't tear up a little over it. Whether Obama can truly bring about a new era in politics remains to be seen. But damn right we'll be watching for it.