While many a Democratic strategist thinks the voter will be selecting Barack Obama as our next President on the basis of issues and policies, not his associations or endorsements, I think the voter should first evaluate his flawed character and judgment.

Character is a quality of paramount importance when it comes to selecting a Commander in Chief. Policies must be considered secondarily.

It is not to say the issues and policies are not important, but when character is flawed, the issues and policies of a candidate come into question.

We shouldn’t be selecting a President on the basis of charisma, energy, age, looks or policies that might benefit a few, or for that matter overall party policies that one might tend to lean toward.

We have elected Presidents of flawed character in the past. Two of them come to mind, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

When we speak of character, we are speaking of moral character, not a character in a play.

Moral character allows us to do the single right thing in a given situation.

Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, during their terms, prove the flaws in moral character to which I am speaking.

Campbell and Bond in 1982 proposed the major factors in influencing character and moral development: heredity, early childhood experience modeling by adults, peer influence, physical and social environment and what is taught in schools and other institutions and roles that elicit corresponding behavior.

If we are to accept Campbell and Bond’s factors in influencing character and moral development let us take a look at Obama’s influencing factors and judgment to associate with same:

An early and continuing association, more recently than 1995, with William Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn, far left Weathermen terrorists; a real estate deal with Tony Rezko on trial for corruption charges; a 20 year association with the Trinity Church in Chicago, where he and his wife were married and their children baptized by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, where he (Obama) says his character was formed, and where Wright delivered incendiary language and anti American invective; an association with Catholic Priest Michael Pfleger, only last week, who delivered a racist mock of Hillary Clinton, prompting Obama to resign from Trinity.

If this is not enough to examine character development, examine the words from Obama himself as they are quoted from two books he wrote, the first “From Dreams of My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” a title given to him by Rev. Wright:

“I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.” From Dreams of My Father

“I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.” From Dreams of My Father.

“There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.” From Dreams of My Father.

“It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.” From Dreams of My Father.

“I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.” From Dreams of My Father.

“I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” From Audacity of Hope.

Now all of these associations form character as Obama said about belonging to Trinity Church, attributing his finding of Christ to Rev. Wright.

Nevertheless as a child he was raised a Muslim, and I for one, would like to know as a presidential candidate, why he would stand with Muslims if the “political winds shift in an ugly direction?”

I think we have a seriously flawed character in candidate Obama and I believe character is far more important than policies, despite the fact that Obama’s policies do not reflect change, for his domestic polices come out of the 1960’s and his foreign policy is out of the 1930’s.