There goes Maggie Gallagher again, trying to say with as much innuendo as possible, that Barack Obama is not like us and therefore shouldn't be elected, in her Aug. 28 opinion column Is Obama Like Us? It's the old trick that if you can't attack someone's record, then attack him on a personal level with lies and implications. This is from a columnist who accepted $41,500 from the Bush administration to promote its pro-marriage plan, so her credibility is already suspect.

She tries to imply that his family doesn't support him by saying he has "few family members who can serve as surrogates." Could that be because his biological father, who left the family when Obama was age 2, died in 1982 and his mother died of cancer in 1995? Then she acts like he should've known that he had a half-brother living in Kenya, when he only saw his biological father one time after the divorce, in 1971.

She also tries to say he isn't like us because he went to Harvard Law School. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone smart governing the country right now instead of our current president, a C-student at Yale admitted only because his father went there? And no, Obama is not like us. How many of us, if we had a magna-cum laude Harvard law degree, would go to work at a civil rights law firm instead of a high-paying mega-buck corporation? How many more of us would leave that job for public service, to run for the Senate?

During the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, our current president claimed to be a regular guy; he was "one of us." Hopefully, American voters will look at Obama's voting record in the Senate and his plans for the future of this country. It's time to elect someone who really cares about the economy and has a plan to turn this country around.

Rolanda Ritzman,

New Berlin