The only way for Obama to approach this is head-on. "If my opponents can think of nothing more substantial than to make fun of my name, they must be out of ideas." And then a couple of sentences about the name itself.

Making fun of people's names is playground bully behavior. Anyone who's not interested in emulating playground bullies ought to refrain from using it, praising it, or dismissing it. On either side.

Long ago, when Johnny Carson was still on TV, he had gone on vacation, leaving Bill Cosby as his guest host. One of Cosby's guests, actress Tyne Daly (her real name), was talking about names. She suggested that children, upon reaching the age of 18, ought to have the right to rename their parents, in order to make parents more careful about the names they give their children.

Obama's middle name would probably still have been Hussein, because it's an honorable name. Only people who are uninformed, or informed but bigoted, believe otherwise.