re: #18 Charles

Goodness—do you think he is wrong about that? I don’t. Reid is right too about the “unless he wanted to have one” comment. Anybody who moves successfully between two cultures knows how to change their accent: this holds too for certain Southern politicians who attended Ivy League schools and who cultivate a “southern” voice when in the South and “New England” one on other occasions. If Obama had been unable to speak standard American English with a standard accent, you don’t think people would have been put off?