The tea party crowd, Sarah Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and, most recently, Donald Trump have leveled some of the most ridiculous allegations against him.
First, there are those who have questioned whether he's Christian, suggesting that he's Muslim, which he isn't.
Then, there are the so-called birthers, who have doubted if Obama is actually a U.S. citizen. This rumor has persisted so long that the president had to take time out from the planning of the bin Laden raid to put it to rest.
But very soon after Obama released his long-form birth certificate, Trump and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan began to interrogate his credentials for getting into Harvard, as if this magna cum laude and editor of the Harvard Law Review somehow didn't have what it takes. It's almost as if they wanted to give him a special IQ test to prove his competency in office. But his gutsy decision to go after bin Laden shows that he passes that one in flying colors.
Obama's opponents have been relentlessly trying to discredit him. Throughout his career, Obama has toed a cautious line and has worked doubly hard against nasty stereotypes. He has adopted a manner of extreme equanimity to forestall suspicions of being hot-tempered, subversive or seditious.
Despite this, his enemies have still portrayed him as "different" -- not a black American, but a Black Panther. And some people in the tea party movement have trafficked in racial stereotypes and flirted with white supremacy, according to a recent report by the NAACP and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.
It's time to put all this nonsense to rest. Barack Obama is the legitimate, elected leader of the United States. His stellar move against bin Laden shows that he's more than up to the job.
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is a poet and critic living in Charleston, S.C. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org. You can read more pieces from The Progressive Media Project by clicking here.