The sad reality is that his family's image had to be carefully managed order for Obama's presidency to become a reality. It would have been very difficult for

The sad reality is that his family's image had to be carefully managed order for Obama's presidency to become a reality. It would have been very difficult for anything less than Huxtable-like perfection to keep the Obamas palatable to middle America. Even with the Obama family's nearly sterling image, Obama smears still got some traction in the sticks amongst those who think he's some sort of sinister, un-American, terrorist fist-jabbing secret Muslim who's not even an American citizen. I guarantee you that if the Obamas looked like a black version of the Palin family (with questionable intellectual pedigree, teenage pregnancy, an uneducated spouse in a radical secessionist party, and close in-laws with predicate felonies and drug problems), the electorate would not have let Barack Obama anywhere near a major party nomination, let alone the presidency.