Forget lean and muscular Obama!

I recently read a headline, on the front page a Chicago area newspaper that made me laugh out loud.

How much self-serving Obama-hype are we expected to take? Who the heck cares how "lean and muscular" Barack Obama's doctor says he is?

I hope all our candidates have reasonably good health.

My doctor told me only last week that I was in "very good shape for my age." But I don't recall him adding that, as a consequence, I should prepare to run for the presidency.

It's been my experience that most Americans are far more concerned with the "fitness" of a presidential candidate from the standpoint of experience, judgment and character.

This is, after all, the most important and demanding political office in the world. So demanding in fact, that from the beginning, we've always had a vice president standing by, if needed.

We are now nearly a year into this campaign and still questioning Sen. Obama's experience, judgment and character, still wondering what he "stands for."

We can expect that he's is in relatively "good shape," given his age, and the fact that we've been exposed to his much exploited swimsuit photo on several occasions.

But let's face it, if local Chicagoans and Illinoisans were only concerned with finding someone physically lean and muscular, we could pick our next president right off Chicago's very popular, Oak Street Beach, and forgo the tedious primaries, national conventions, and maybe even the entire 2008 presidential elections.

But then, the adoring members of mainstream media couldn't devote all that glitzy exposure, and their bare-bones coverage to the rock star junior senator from Illinois.

Patrick J. Dalton

Northbrook