Doug Wead, the evangelical former advisor to both Bush presidents, wants to know more about Barack Obama, specifically about his middle name:

The Obama dream is intoxicating but who is he? Has he really been vetted? And why can’t we say his middle name? Barack Hussein Obama? We can say James Earl Carter and no one is offended. We can say William Jefferson Clinton or George Herbert Walker Bush. Why is everything so off limits with Obama? What’s behind the Hussein?

Doesn’t mean he is bad or that there is necessarily something that will disqualify him. The American people can be very tolerant. We elected Grover Cleveland even though he fathered a child out of wedlock. But as Rudolph Giuliani can testify, we do want to know everything. There is no such thing as a private life for a public person, at least the premier public person in our society, our president. We want to know. And that does not make us voyeurs or bad people or judgmental or racist. It makes us smart….
When we learned that Mel Gibson’s father was a Holocaust denier it put a whole new wrinkle on the production of The Passion. It didn’t mean we wouldn’t go see it or that we don’t like his movies. The Patriot was amazing. But it was instructive to know. So what does Obama’s father have to say about life and Islam and the world? And what does his stepfather think? What do his cousins think? What do his friends from Indonesia think? What are we afraid to hear? Why should we wait and hear it after it’s too late and he is the president? Why not now? Doesn’t mean we won’t vote for him. Just means we want to know.

What do you think? Has Obama, including his and his relatvies’ experiences with Islam, been properly vetted? Should his relatives be vetted?

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