It is unfortunate but true…  that the politics of personal destruction has being going on in presidential politics for quite some time now. In 1984 a peace activist, lecturing school children in Maine, predicted they would never grow up if Reagan were reelected because he would cause a nuclear war.
     Some of the kinder epithets thrown at Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) were “The Original Gorilla,” “baboon,” (according to Gen. McClellan), and “tyrant.” Enemies claimed that his real goal was to force white women to marry freed slaves. Harper’s Magazine put it all in one sentence calling Lincoln, “Filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”
     Barack Obama is in excellent company.

     As Obama himself admits, his is not the typical presidential biography. Born of a Kansas mother and a Kenyan father, he was raised for a few years in Indonesia and grew to manhood in his grandparents’ home in Hawaii. There is fertile ground here for insinuation and invective.
     At least that is what author Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., seems to have found, judging from his book, The Obama Nation. I have no principles that are offended by books or articles attacking Obama’s policy positions, or his lack of sufficient experience, as reasons to vote against him. One could write volumes.
     On the other hand I cannot trust any book that is researched so poorly or makes major claims unsupported by evidence. 
     I’ve written and published some non-fiction myself. In researching the life of General Grant I checked, double checked and triple-checked original and top secondary sources before asserting facts about Grant’s Civil War career (Commanders in Focus: Ulysses S. Grant, Brassey, 2004). I read and reread every book I could find on the man, even those only tangentially concerning him.
     That is the standard of research usually required for non-fiction. I emphasize the word “usually.”

     What kind of research must Dr. Corsi have done if he gets the date of Obama’s wedding wrong? He asserts Obama does not mention the birth of his half-sister in his books (he does) He claims Obama wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan (Obama has consistently called for reinforcing the U.S. presence there).
     How can Obama be tainted both by his membership in a radical Christian church (Trinity United Church of Christ) and by allegedly “extensive” ties to Islam? Wouldn’t it be one or the other?
      Obama admitted using cocaine as a youth. Dr. Corsi claims he’s still on the stuff. Says who? What an allegation without evidence to back it up!  
     I could never place any credibility in a book so sloppily researched, so careless of fact.

    I oppose Barack Obama. I do not like his policies on defense, abortion and social programs. I think his message of “change” and “hope” is at best vague and undefined mush. Obama is inexperienced. He certainly does not have the experience in national government required if we are going to face a new cold war with the Russians at the same time we are waging a war against Islamist terror.
     But Obama does not deserve a bucket of mud in the face. Let him rise or fall on the merits of his ideas and in the forum of civilized discussion. Let the people have facts to weigh and accurate quotes from the candidates to ponder as we make our electoral decisions.