I must say, he's threaded the needle. And he's done it the only way you can actually do such a thing: he's been honest. I respect him for that.
I don't agree with his policies. I think he would be a very bad (meaning, ultra-liberal) President.
But he has managed to speak the truth about race relations in this country. He has criticized his pastor forthrightly, but in love. The Proverbs say one should rebuke an older man the way you would a father -- essentially, an impossible task. But he has managed to do it.
So, even though I don't agree with him and won't vote for him, he has my respect. He's not a phony, like Hillary. He may be as calculating a politician, and as crazy a liberal, as she is; but I think he's for real.
Expansion
What I mean by "threaded the needle" is that he has avoided both avenues that had been projected for him by pundits and pols of various sorts. His options, as framed by the chattering class, were:
a) to continue to evade knowledge of the anti-Americanism, bigotry, and lunacy espoused in Rev. Wright's sermons, which would make him either a liar or a fool;
b) to attempt to shrug off -- or worse, defend -- Rev. Wright's statements under the rubric that "this is a black thing and you white folks just don't understand," which would make him just a classier Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
Now, I don't like his "transcending race" by simply declaring people of all races equally victims of the shadowy forces of "lobbyists," "partisanship," "corporate interests," etc. That's just leftist agitprop. There's a conservative case to be made for empowering people of all races, too. But lefty or righty, at least Obama has left behind the old grudge factory that we've been stuck with far too long.