Barack Obama

Jeremiah Wright's recent media blitz has complicated Barack Obama's efforts to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.

To describe Jeremiah Wright as charismatic is to understate his extraordinary magnetism, which drew Barack Obama to Christianity twenty years ago. Sure, Wright is a divisive figure, but he's a uniter as well -- embracing gays and lesbians as well as militant Black Muslims, and building a kind of rainbow coalition of the excluded, which inspired Obama (and countless others) to go forth and perform good works. In turning on his pastor, Obama claims that Wright has changed. Could it be that Obama has changed?

Barack Obama addressed a rally at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one week before that state's Democratic primary.

It was a college crowd: young women with Kool Aid-dyed hair, mop-topped men in novelty bow-ties, kids wearing t-shirts that advertised ironic slogans ("Super Jew!") and summer holidays to Angkor Wat -- all grooving to "Big Yellow Taxi." But it was also more. A scan of the seats revealed lots of normal people as well, including a robust and enthusiastic contingent of African-Americans, thrilled to be in an Obama coalition, and by all evidence grooving to the Joni Mitchell just as to the Motown.

The coalition looked broad and deep. It did not, however, look like America, or even North Carolina. MORE

Two prominent Catholic conservatives have endorsed Barack Obama for President.

The differences between the arguments that Douglas Kmiec and Andrew Bacevich have deployed to explain their support for Obama speaks volumes about how hard it is to generalize about Catholic conservatives, let alone Catholics as a whole. MORE

Bill Richardson, former presidential hopeful and current New Mexico governor, endorsed Barack Obama for president.

Few politicians are as accomplished as Richardson; even fewer are as accomplished while projecting his air of bumbling and incompetence. By many accounts this impression is just a lack of charisma, and he has "substance" to make up for it. But the endorsement, embraced publicly by Obama, should provoke private shudders: This man is hexed. MORE