Obama focuses on dads; McCain meets with Iraqi minister

COMBINED NEWS SERVICES

June 16, 2008

In a Father's Day address heavy with personal and political meaning, Democrat Barack Obama told worshipers at a Chicago church yesterday that government must do more to help families - but he also exhorted parents, especially fathers, to play their part by raising healthy children.

In Arlington, Va., Republican presidential candidate John McCain met yesterday with Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari. The two discussed security improvements in Iraq, and spoke about negotiations between the two countries on an agreement to pave the way for the future presence of U.S. military forces in Iraq.

"It's very important that we not let any of this success slip away," McCain said after the meeting at his campaign office.

In a popular church on Chicago's South Side, Obama decried the shortage of police on the streets and money for schools, as well as a proliferation of guns in the wrong hands. But America needs more than jobs and opportunity in its communities, the presidential candidate told the hometown congregation.

"We also need families to raise our children," he said. "We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child."

Obama's story of fatherhood came in the aftermath of his painful separation from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., a father figure who, as Obama's longtime pastor, played a key role in his spiritual maturation as a young man.

As the first stop in Obama's quest for a new religious home, Chicago's Apostolic Church of God offered a symbolic new beginning. Obama chose a somewhat more conservative church than Trinity United Church of Christ, where he was a member until recently.