Americans want "real answers" on the economic crisis and "don't care about the back and forth between the candidates", Barack Obama's wife said on Wednesday.
Michelle Obama said there were "two conversations" going on in the United States ahead of November's presidential election.
"There's the conversation that's been happening with the pundits ... and then there's the conversation that's been happening on the ground," she told CNN's Larry King Live.
Mrs Obama, a Harvard Law-educated hospital executive and mother-of-two, often humanises her husband on the campaign trail and said she ignored his rival John McCain's attacks.
She said Americans were more concerned about the financial crisis that was engulfing the country.
Americans "right now are scared" and "nervous about the economy", she said.
"They don't care about the back and forth between the candidates.
"They want real answers about how we're going to fix this economy and get the health care benefits on track so, you know, this is part of politics."
With less than four weeks to go until the election, Mr Obama leads in virtually all the battleground states and has more than a five point lead nationally in the latest average of polls by RealClearPolitics.com.
Mr McCain's poll numbers plummeted as his campaign stumbled in its handling of the US economic crisis in recent weeks.
The race took an aggressively negative turn over the weekend when Mr McCain's running mate Sarah Palin claimed the Democrat was "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country".
The attack referred to Mr Obama's ties to William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical group known for bombings of police stations, the Pentagon and the US Capitol.
Asked about the comments, Mrs Obama said her husband served on a Chicago education board with Ayers.
