I'm sorry but Obama and Hillary are not great candidates (in all fairness, neither is McCain).
Obama's selling point is his charisma but where does leadership entail charisma? Historically there is not viable link between speaking well and acting well.
Obama appeals to people because generally people hate Bush and believe that they should avoid any semblance of him. However, Obama has no issue on anything. "change" is the biggest load of cr@p I've heard.
What is he changing?
In what capacity will he change "it"?
Why is change necessarily good?
Why did he, as John Edwards pointed out, Refused to vote over 100 times in congress - because he couldn't give a speech for it?
I think people tend to think of themselves as rebels or intellectually dissenting people by "changing" the problems. But insofar as no one can give any substantive response to any of the questions posed themselves, they are being hypocritical or wasting everyones' time.
Onto Wright, Hillary makes some sense - why would you attend a service that you don't agree with on any level? This puts him in a double bind: Either he admits that he agreed on some level with what Wright says then he is at least in the small part slanted against whites by always referring to whites as "typical whites". Or If he truly attended anyway, what's to say he won't be a puppet at the national level and become subservant to the "establishment" (or the anti-change folks).
Further it is almost embarrassing to watch him struggle to answer questions. His race bit was counter-intuitive and off-topic. The Wright situation is not about racism (or at least in its core). The Wright situation is about Obama's unwillingness to uncover parts of his past that affect his character. If we can't trust him why should we elect him. As far as the race bit, it didn't address the core point within the Wright situation.
Race shouldn't be an issue. In debate there are certain caveats. The government only has the ability to stop inherency but never attitudinal inherency. An attitude like racism cannot be stopped at the national level. If we go back to the civil rights mvts, we can see that legislation was passed and the problem wasn't solved. Why? Because the government isn't the solution, the people are. (As Regan put it: "The government is too big and it spends too much"). To change (there's his favorite word) racism you can't go through the government it takes grassroots upheaval. So, on a holistic level, Obama isn't approaching it right. Plus, Obama is being very hypocritical because he keeps saying all the people who he is related to: Brad Pitt, LJ, etc. are all white! Plus, why does he care so much about racism? As an Irish Catholic, can't I claim racism when the Irish weren't allowed in America because of being Catholic and being dirty with their potatoes? Where is my justice, aren't we all not people? Could I go back further and say that I was oppressed by the English for similar reasons?
Moreover, not to burst anyone's bubble but there is a lot more important issues than rehashing Obama's view of equality. Health care (*cough* without bankrupting the gov) should take precedence; immigration, which affects tens of millions of people should take precedence; economics, etc.
As for his overall qualifications there isn't much to talk about because there aren't any. Obama's only qualification is anti-bush. Obama is the everything not Bush that people are too unwilling to swallow because they disagreed with Bush. Instead of rationally choosing a candidate that isn't a freshman senator, America will send a freshmen voted the most liberal (the most anti-Bush). Think of it this way (those few of you reading this): America is like a big school electing a student body presedent. The last one was a really annoying guy you didn't like and now a new election comes and you're voting in the freshman just out of eighth grade because he "relates" to "you".
So go for it America, take your anti-Bush pill, but remember this eight years later when your scrambling to find someone who was just voted the most Republican senator - but I get to say I told you so...
Proof:
Eyeblast.tv - A Video Portrait Of Barack Hussein Obama