In every presidential campaign, a candidate’s character plays a crucial role. We can't predict the challenges and issues a new president may face (who would have suggested George W. Bush would become a war time president?) but considering questions of temperament and competence and decency allows voters to predict how well a potential president might respond. Unfortunately for Senator Obama, his performance in the Jeremiah Wright controversy shows weak leadership and deeply flawed integrity.

His startling inability to work with his own former pastor to prevent serious damage to his campaign hardly inspires confidence in his capacity to unite Democrats, deal with a fractious Congress, or cope with foreign powers. If he can't manage to coordinate a message with his friend and mentor of twenty years, or else separate himself from that association before launching his campaign, then he'll find it even more difficult to work together with hostile strangers. Meanwhile, he offers no credible explanation for his abrupt change in attitude toward Rev. Wright. Six weeks ago he said “I can no more disown him that I can disown the black community.” Obama now denounces Wright and cites “anger” at statements at the National Press Club. But none of Wright's positions there departs from radical attitudes he’s expressed consistently for twenty years.

If Obama now says he's shocked to discover that Wright is, indeed, a crackpot who poisons the discourse, and not just a lovable and eccentric "old uncle," then the Senator is either distorting the truth or admitting incompetence. A president will need to evaluate complicated intelligence reports to determine the situation with foreign powers and terrorist threats. If Obama remained blithely oblivious to his own pastor's anti-American radicalism for twenty years, if he new less about his friend than did most members of press and public, his judgment and ability look deeply questionable. This is not a matter of "guilt by association"  (as so many Obama defenders insist) but an issue of capability and reliability and honesty that goes to the very core of the candidate's suitability as President of the United States. The whole sad affair highlights the weakness, poor judgment and waffling of an increasingly desparate presidential contender.