Hussein Power!

While endorsing Hillary Clinton, former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey had this to say about Barack Obama: "I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal."

Mark Kleiman agrees this is a boon for an Obama Presidency, while James Joyner dissents:

I disagree strongly with Kerrey and Kleiman about the value of having a president with a Muslim middle name. Indeed, the idea that religious nuts who are willing to murder thousands of Americans would think “Hey, they elected a guy with a Muslim middle name! They must be okay!” is absurd. Hell, they kill plenty of people named Hussein who actually are Muslims; the only thing they hate more than American infidels is Arab apostates.

But as Kevin Drum rejoins, the benefit of Barack Hussein Obama isn't that the hardcore jihadists will suddenly see the error of their ways. It's that he has a great potential to peel off support from the rest of the Arab World (also, is Obama even of Arab ancestry? His father was from Kenya -- not an Arab state, though he still could be ethnically Arab).

Kleiman also points out that Obama's race could be a disadvantage, given the intense amount of anti-Black prejudice in the Arab World. I think that likely won't be a factor -- and certainly will be outweighed by the boon the "Obama image" would bring in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere throughout the globe.