Madam, - Tony Allwright's column on Barack Obama ("Obama is a triumph of style over substance", Opinion, September 10th) is both misleading and of questionable accuracy on several key points.
Barack Obama worked as a "community organiser" after he left college, with the organisation Project Vote, which worked to register and empower poor African-Americans in the south side of Chicago. He did this for little pay, and even less prestige, after graduating magna cum laudefrom Harvard, where he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Such a resumé would have granted him almost instant access to any high-paying corporate law firm, but he chose to give back to the community instead.
True, Senator Obama did not publish any academic papers while he was lecturing in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. This is because at the same he was working at Miner, Barnhill Galland, a law firm specialising in civil rights litigation and neighbourhood economic development, and later as a legislator in the Illinois state senate. It is not surprising that while teaching, giving legal aid, being a state senator, and serving on the boards of several charitable foundations, Obama did not find the time to publish. Perhaps being an academic just wasn't his primary career goal.
Mr Allwright is incorrect when he claims Obama has not sponsored any significant legislation in the federal Senate. What about the Lugar-Obama arms control legislation, or the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which has allowed citizens to see directly where their tax dollars go? Do these count as insignificant in his eyes?
He also recycles the National Journal's claim that Obama is the most left-wing senator in the US. Really? More left-wing than self-styled socialist Bernie Sanders? Or progressive icon Russ Feingold? Even more left-wing than the senator the National Journalclaimed to be the most left-wing in 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry? One might be tempted to question the Journal's methodology (as several academics have, and concluded that ideologically Obama is slightly to the left of the median Democratic senator).
Mr Allwright then simply lists various people Obama has known at some point or another as if this is somehow damning evidence. Obama did serve on two non-profit boards with William Ayers - not surprising, given that they were both professors at the University of Chicago at the time. And while Mr Allwright might describe Rashid Khalidi as an "Israel-hating supporter of Palestinian terror", many others would call him an internationally respected academic and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia University, New York.
One can certainly criticise Senator Obama's policies, but practically every second sentence in Mr Allwright's article is a distortion, a smear, or a mischaracterisation (particularly his assertion that Senator Obama believes his grandmother to be a racist).
It does not reflect well on Senator Obama's opponents if this is the best they can throw at him. - Yours, etc,
DARAGH McDOWELL,
Drummartin Terrace,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.