BARACK OBAMA - Too good to be true?

Barack Hussein Obama was born on 4 August 1961 in the Hawaiian capital Honolulu.
His father Barack Snr, was a Kenyan born economist, while his mother Ann Dunham, was an anthropologist from Kansas, USA.
Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother in 1967, attending foreign schools in Jakarta, before returning to Hawaii in 1971 to live with his grandmother and complete his high school education.
He went on to study political science at the prestigious Columbia University in New York before he moved to Chicago in the mid-80s to work as a community organiser in the deprived South Side area of the city.
In 1988 he was accepted by the world famous Harvard Law School, and went on to marry his wife Michelle in 1992.
For the next five years Obama lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
He turned to professional politics in 1997, when he was elected as a State Legislator, before claiming the junior Illinois senate seat in the US House of Representatives in 2004, becoming only the fifth black man to be elected to the senate.
His inspirational speech at the Democratic National Convention in that same year, catapulted him to nationwide fame, and in February 2007 Obama announced his candidacy for President of the US.
Most political commentators wrote him off, and much of the early media attention focused on his main rival, former First Lady Hillary Clinton.
But in the Iowa primary, Obama beat Clinton, setting him on the path to the White House. His campaign harnessed the fund raising power of the internet, and galvanised support from African Americans and intellectuals.
After a long and bitter primary campaign, Clinton endorsed Obama on 7 June 2008.
As the economy crumbled and anger at the outgoing administration deepened, Obama pulled clear of his Republican opponent, war hero John McCain.
On 4 November 2008, Obama waltzed to a landslide victory, and was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on 20 January 2009.

During both the primary and presidential campaigns Obama was hit by a barrage of allegations regarding his lineage, political allies and business dealings.
While most of these were successfully debunked or deflected by his aides, many of them have taken up root in the conspiracy theories that now surround his dramatic rise to power.
One of the most widely believed theories is that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but was actually delivered in Kenya, a claim allegedly proved by a "secret" tape of his grandmother recalling his birth in Africa.
Another persistent rumour is that he was raised as a Muslim, and that his education in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic nation, saw him schooled in radical ideas.
When he fumbled his lines during the inauguration, the conspiracy community went into overdrive, claiming he wasn't really President, and that the oath had to be taken again.
To avoid a furore, he swore the oath of office again in the Map Room of the White House, putting in a word perfect performance this time.
However, the conspiracy theories did not stop there.
Obama did not place his hand on a bible during the second oath, though he is under no constitutional obligation to do so, leading right wing bloggers to claim this as a clear piece of evidence that he was secretly a Muslim man posing as a Christian, determined to destablilise America.
Indeed most of the Obama theories revolve around linking his name with the word "terror".
Having failed to come up with a plausible theory questioning Obama's devout Christianity, the conspiracy community has turned to his relationship with former Weather Underground "domestic terrorist" Bill Ayers.
Obama was tainted by this relationship in the campaign, but the story did not gain traction in the mainstream press due to the casual nature of their association.
However, this violent, firebrand liberal has become the focus of the conservative conspiracy community's attention, with theorists suggesting that he co-wrote Obama's hit book Dreams From My Father, that he was a spiritual and political mentor to a young Obama, and that he is secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes of the new White House administration.
As with all major public figures, Obama has attracted huge attention, and an equally massive number of conspiracy theories. Many are repellent and racist, some, including the suggestion that he is Malcolm X's illegitimate son, are plainly bonkers.
All of the theories, though, share a common theme. Without fail they seek to paint Obama as a danger to America, a threat to national security and a usurper of the highest office in the land.

- It is true that Obama fumbled his first attempt at being sworn in, and he did not have a bible in his hand as he swore the second oath.

- He did go to school in the most populous Muslim country on the planet, but this by no means provides proof that he is or was Islamic or that he came into contact with any sort of radical ideas (it was primary school after all).

- He did know Bill Ayers, a self-confessed and unrepentant member of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organisation.

- If it exists, a tape of his Grandmother recalling his birth in Kenya would be a devastating blow to his credibility.

- The fumbled oath was a result of Chief Justice John Roberts attempting to recite the vow without notes in front of over a million spectators. Obama simply repeated what was said to him. It was not a deliberate attempt to retake the oath without a bible, as he is under no legal obligation to use a bible anyway.

- During the campaign the Obama team produced a birth certificate proving he was born in Hawaii. Contemporary reports from the Honolulu Advertiser back up this document.

- There is no evidence that Ayers played any significant role in Obama's campaign or that they are still in touch. Obama wrote the vast majority of his memoir overseas, without any help from a man he barely knew.

- Despite the slurs about his religion, his association with Ayers and the determined Republican effort to paint him as a danger to America, Obama was elected in a landslide, and enters office with one of the highest approval ratings in US political history.

Barack Obama's rise to power was always going to spawn some bizarre conspiracy theories. But the fact that so little evidence has been produced and so much prejudice and bitterness has been folded into these theories makes them seem implausible and unfounded. Obama was born in the US, he is a strongly Christian man, he does not "pal around" with domestic terrorists and most importantly he has been chosen by the vast majority of Americans to lead them out of the crisis-struck Bush years, and back to greatness. Maybe the mainstream US media gave him an easy ride, maybe his flaws were not fully exposed, but whatever the conspiracy theorists may choose to believe the American people have spoken with a clear voice, and Barack Obama is their man.