Obama's foes resort to scare tactics

Criticism pours out against Sen. Obama the person.

We hear of his alleged associations with radicals, murky past and lack of substance. Or he's a socialist, terrorist, or Muslim. That he lacks experience.

These false attacks mislead the undecided and dangerously feed the anger of the far-right fringe and racists.

Sen. Obama's past, a little unusual due to his African father and Indonesian stepfather, are open books for anyone to see. To our advantage, his background is both multiracial and multicultural.

Bill Ayers, education professor and valued contributor to education initiatives in Chicago, has a radical past. Ayers doesn't endorse Obama. Obama doesn't endorse Ayers and has publicly denounced his past. Their association has been casual.

Sen. Obama was not a child of the '60s; he was a child in the '60s.

Fiery Jeremiah Wright was the pastor at Obama's Christian church (Obama a Muslim?) and Wright's sermons were full of exaggeration and bluster.

First, free speech is a right and second, this was mild compared to the sermons of Sen. McCain's supporters like reverends Hagee and Parsley.

All style? After college (Columbia University), Obama worked as a community organizer with a church-based group, then attended Harvard Law School and was the president of the Harvard Law Review, a journal of legal scholarship.

Returning to Chicago, he worked as an attorney and taught constitutional law. He served three terms in the Illinois Senate (the 5th largest state with 12.6 million people and a $50 billion budget), then on to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

There he is a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and has helped create legislation regarding lobbying, climate change, nuclear terrorism and care for returning vets.

When everything else fails, the last weapons, sadly, are lies, scare tactics, and innuendo. The American people are too smart to fall for that.

David Troland

Arlington Heights