Michelle Obama's military strategy

The solution should be to put Obama front and center. She's friendly, personable. She hugs people. The round table feels more like a taping of "Oprah" than a campaign event, and not just because of the African-American woman at the center of it all, but more because it's women sitting around, hashing out the difficult details of having a job, a husband, kids and a house.

What Obama's not so good at is the unblinking eye of the TV camera. Her humor is heartfelt -- but can be sarcastic. While Bill Clinton won over crowds with his "I feel your pain" empathy, Michelle Obama is more likely to get indignant. She's the friend who slams her hand down on the table with an "I can't believe they did that."

It works in person. But without context, it can sound like complaining.

Possibly that's why Obama's campaign has organized these round-table talks with military wives. It would be hard to find a group in America with more right to complain than the spouses of the men and women serving in the overburdened, underfunded U.S. military.

This round table is the third event on Michelle Obama's listening tour. Previous round-table discussions took place in Fort Bragg, N.C., and Hopkinsville, Ky. The program is called "Blue Star Families," and the Obama campaign Web site has posts from military personnel and their families about why they're supporting the Democrat.

Obama's campaign is counting on the deep sense of disenchantment service members and their families in Norfolk have with repeated and drawn-out deployments and the concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These are all women up here today, but we could have packed this stage full of men who are military spouses," Obama says.

"Too often it seems like you're doing it all on your own, holding it together," she adds. Obama says that given all the challenges that face ordinary folks with housing and healthcare and higher prices, "it makes it even more amazing to me to understand how you do it."

"When the military goes to war, or deploys at sea, their families go with them," she says.

The handpicked audience reacts with cheers and applause time and time again during Obama's roughly 20-minute opening remarks, with the loudest ovations for the details of her husband's plan to redefine the U.S. military's plans overseas and provide more regularly scheduled troop deployments with more time at home.

She also speaks about her husband's grandparents -- the white ones: the grandfather who enlisted after Pearl Harbor and went on to march in Gen. George Patton's Army. "And his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line while he was gone. And his mother was born in Fort Leavenworth."

Obama notes that it was the G.I. Bill that sent Barack's grandfather to college and a loan from the Federal Housing Administration that helped the family buy a home.

Obama didn't delve deeper into her husband's family background, but it's often discussed by others in the same breath as the governor of Virginia -- Tim Kaine. The Democrat shares family ties with Barack Obama, whose grandfather, the one who marched with Patton, comes from the same small Kansas town, El Dorado, as Gov. Kaine's mother. The connection comes up every time Gov. Kaine's name is mentioned lately, because he's on Obama's shortlist for potential vice presidents.

Kaine could shore up some of Obama's perceived weaknesses. His race for governor featured some surprising wins in traditionally Republican, working-class parts of this Southern state. He's also Roman Catholic, and speaks fluent Spanish.

But for now, all eyes are on Michelle. Earlier in the day she visited a preschool and read a children's book to about a dozen schoolchildren. In the evening she attended a fundraiser attended by Gov. Kaine and his wife that featured Virginia native Bruce Hornsby.

But what dominated the noon news and the evening newscasts was Obama sitting quietly nodding and listening to the troubles of military spouses.

Tammy Linton is a 34-year-old Air Force veteran whose husband spent two tours in the Middle East. Despite all her training as an operating room nurse, Linton says her military commanders couldn't supply even basic child care for her 2- and 8-year-old boys. "I'm a registered nurse and got a position on the trauma team and I had to give up that job because I couldn't get child care."

Elaine Guishard's husband is a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. The mother of two teenagers is also a breast cancer survivor who has no assurances that her healthcare will continue if her husband leaves the service.

Beth Robinson is pregnant, has an 18-month-old toddler and has multiple sclerosis. Her husband, and high school sweetheart, has 13 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and has returned to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once since 2006. Within the next year, he's likely to be deployed again to the Middle East.

To a woman, their struggles focused on housing, healthcare and basic child care -- all topped off with a big dollop of deployment. "I don't think that many Americans that are not in the military understand just what you've laid out," Obama tells the women. "And that's one of the reasons we're doing this. I don't think people understand all that goes into serving the country, and going to war."

"What you're asking for, it isn't extra; it's the basics that you need to survive. And we should be at the point where you're not just talking about survival, you're talking about thriving. We need families that thrive."