Barack Obama inspires the kind of mania more appropriate perhaps to the Beatles or a religious cult.

Take the elderly man accosting passersby outside the Overture Center Monday afternoon, a handmade yard sign hung around his neck.

“Vote for Ohhhhhhhhhh-BAMA!” he yelled repeatedly, raising his arms Y-M-C-A style over his head to make an ‘O.’

Obama calls this “hopemongering,” but his critics say that his campaign amounts to inspirational fluffing and not a lot of action.

Michelle Obama spoke this afternoon at the Overture Center in a speech that highlighted her husband’s roots and defended his supposed lack of substance. About 900 people filled the Capitol Theatre almost to capacity.

The United States doesn’t need more resources or plans: “A lot of this stuff isn’t rocket science. We know what to do,” she said, giving as an example well-funded schools that already work well, even as others go under-funded. What’s missing from our educational system is not more planning but the courage to take the first step to have a more inclusive vision for the country.

“It’s not just words when you say we are each other’s brothers and keepers. That’s where it starts,” she said.

She also defended his ability lead the country and “take on Republicans” despite only two terms in the Illinois Senate.

“Folks here in Wisconsin, you know. We live in Chicago, and some of the toughest, meanest politics are there,” she said.

Michelle Obama made a break from the pants-suited look recent First Ladies have favored, instead going for pleather knee-high boots, a tight pencil skirt and sparkly top.

Like her husband, she plugged the message of change and a cut with the past.

“When you’re struggling to make the bar, it’s so easy to be led by fear. When you’re struggling, it’s easy to feel that everyone’s working against you. It cuts us off from one another, from the rest of the world,” she said, adding that this fear will get passed on to the next generation unless change happens.

“I’m here because I don’t want that for my little girls,” she said.

Towards the end of her 50-minute talk, she told the undecided voters in the audience that at the bottom line, she supports her husband because of his character.

“I married Barack because of his values. It’s about character and the choices that people have made over their lifetimes,” she said. “What did they do in the shadows?”

Unlike the other candidates who “made their millions before working with the people,” Obama chose to work as a community organizer in poor south side Chicago neighborhoods right after he finished law school.

She and her husband just finished paying off their student loans three years ago, she added, and were only able to do that because of “luck” and the royalties from Obama’s two books.

What a candidate does when they’re “in the shadows,” not in the limelight, is what really matters: “Barack will not be a perfect president, but what you can count on is that he will admit his mistakes.”