(CBS) Obama does think the U.S. is ready for a black president and he doesn't think his race is going to hold him back.

"I think if I don't win this race it will be because of other factors. It's gonna be because I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace," he tells Kroft.

"There's one poll that shows Hillary Clinton is leading 53 to 27 among African-Americans," Kroft says. "Are you surprised by that? Are you disappointed by that?"

"Not at all," Obama says. "I think that there is a assumption on the part of some commentators that somehow, the black community is so unsophisticated that the minute you put an African-American face up on the screen, that they automatically say, 'That's our guy.' A black candidate has to earn black votes the same way that he's gotta earn white votes. And that's exactly how it should be."

And he has done it in Chicago, where he began his political career after meeting and marrying Michelle Robinson, another Harvard Law School graduate, 14 years ago. She is an executive with the University of Chicago Hospitals, and they have two children Malia, who’s eight and Sasha, five.

His daughters are interested in their father’s campaign only to the extent that it influences their campaign to get a dog.

Their only memory of the White House when they made the tour was President Bush's dog, so that was their main focus—the possibility," Obama tells Kroft.

"This is our in—to get a dog," his wife Michelle adds. "Good. Really. You run for president. But, if we get a dog, we don't care what you do."

Michelle, on the other hand, did care and Obama had to persuade his wife to let him run. Political campaigns make her feel like a single mother.

Asked if it has put strains on the marriage from time to time, Michelle Obama says, sarcastically, "Oh-nooooo."

"Absolutely it has," he husband adds.

"But, you'd let him go ahead and do this?" Kroft asks Michelle Obama.

"I think if I weren't married to him, I'd want him to be in there," she says. "So, I don't wanna stand in the way of that, because we have to work out a few things. So, we've kind of, you know, we figured out those, we've had those arguments, and…" she says.

"And, I've lost them all," the senator throws in.

"This is a tough question to ask, but a number of years ago Colin Powell was thinking about running for president, and his wife Alma, really did not want him to run. She was worried about some crazy person, with a gun…. Is that something that you think about?" Kroft asks.

"I don't lose sleep over it because the realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know. So, you know, you can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen. We just weren't raised that way," she says.

Produced By Tom Anderson and L. Franklin Devine
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