With tensions high and polls reporting Romney and President Obama tied at 47% a piece, one might ask just what have we learned about both candidates? Was Romney really a stiff, uncaring, capitalist, out of touch with normal people? Is President Obama really the rigid ideologue that his critics have labeled him being? Do either of the candidates have a viable economic and jobs recovery plan?

Let us take a look at not only what both men claim, but what they have achieved in the course of their private and public lives. Then we will get a better insight into who these men really are. I think it’s safe to say that this 2012 election is more controversial and full of negative ads than any we can remember in a long time if at all.

Barack Hussein Obama began in the US as a foreign student claiming to have been born in Hawaii. There has been much controversy around his origins. Many lawyers, investigators, and concerned citizens have been very uncertain and unhappy with the evidence used to validate his claims. Much of this disparity in proof hinges on whether Barack Hussein Obama is really constitutionally qualified for the presidency to begin with while others feel that since he has already been inaugurated that it’s a moot point.

By his very own admission in his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama admits to drug use and drinking heavily. It is known that once attending Columbia and serving as an associate professor that the staff of professors there were frustrated and resentful over Barack Obama’s lack of attendance and discipline. Many of Barack Obama’s academic records have been sequestered by the universities he attended and are not open to public inspection. One might ask why since being the President of the United States of America, transparency was one of Obama’s campaign policies in 2008.

Barack Obama is not known to have worked any regular job even though he claims to have worked at Baskin Robbins, there seems to be no proof. Once receiving grants for a scholarship and graduating from college, he immediately went into civil rights as a community organizer in the state of Illinois and met with many well known leftist leaders who have made widely known anti American statements, have been critical of American society, and have even been known to have been under investigation for their illegal activities.  

President Obama’s affiliation with these people has made many wonder how it is that he himself has avoided prosecution when Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko, Courtney Dupree, all were convicted of fraud and corruption and are now serving time in prison. One of Obama’s mentors, William Ayers, was a domestic terrorist who destroyed federal property using bombs, he led the Weather Underground, a radical group committed to overthrowing the US and establishing a Communist coalition government that would have executed Americans who refused to be indoctrinated. Ayers detonated a nail bomb that wounded a federal judges young son. William Ayers was not only an Obama mentor, but actually help establish his political career, and is said to have ghost written at least one of Obama’s books.

Obama’s controversial mentors and long time friends go further with Reverend Wright, a radical preacher who has been quoted as saying “God damn America!” Derrick Bell, a law professor who advised blacks to harass white people. A member of the radical group ACORN who Obama has  for years is another of the President’s disturbing associations. ACORN has been brought on charges in several states for various alleged criminal acts including soliciting prostitution. You might recall that it was ACORN who coerced and pressured Banks to make high risk loans to unqualified recipients under the aegis of racial equality using sit down protests in bank lobbies and even confronting banking officers at their homes.

Under the CRA(Community Reinvestment Act) Obama and Democrat leadership brought about a housing crisis along with massive defaults that caused the financial melt down of the US financial markets. Obama sat on the board of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004 assuring Congress that the two trouble mortgage backing giants were solvent when, in fact, they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Junior Senator Barack Obama got over $100,000 in bonuses and commissions for misleading Congress along with Dodd and Franks as a major financial crisis loomed in the near future.

These revelations into Obama’s clouded background compel us to ask a couple of questions. 1) Why were these aspects of Obama’s life never exposed by the US media while they raked John McCain over the coals for being born of a US Navy Admiral in the Panama Canal Zone? 2) Why was Junior Senator Obama never thoroughly vetted by not only the DNC, but Republican leaders before the 2008 elections?

In all this we might also ask if character is an important aspect of the Presidency then why would these troubling aspects of the life and career of Obama that I have detailed, not be deciding factors in whether or not President Obama was elected or if he will be re-elected? If voters value integrity in a candidate, have they simply overlooked this requirement in Barack Hussein Obama, or have the US media and the Democratic Party done a great job of hiding these problematical points from the attention of a disengaged public?

In Part II we will discuss the influences that affect the character of a candidate and if it is really possible to find a trustworthy candidate in today's society.