...but is he half-black ENOUGH?
I like Barak Obama, but I also recognize that a portion of that affection is something of a projection on my part (as I suppose most political affiliation is.)
I think that Barak has the intelligence to recognize the value of bipartisanship. I'm not too moved by "hope" and "change". I'd rather a candidate was expressing the hard choices that we have to make such as John McCain has regarding the Bush administration's war policies or Mike Huckabee when he describes our foreign policy as "arrogant".
Overall, I like intelligence as a prerequisite to elected office. However, academic and author Shelby Steele says that Barak may be unable to nail down what "hope" and "change" really mean. Mr. Steele (author of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win) suggests that blacks fall in to two bold categories, the bargainers and the challengers.