By all accounts, Barack Obama should win this election. He and his brand control the image, the message and, to a large extent, the media of this election cycle.

Yes, the media. He has enough money to buy ads every day from now to election day, glossy magazines cannot wait to put his image on their covers, Hollywood types are so smitten that they wear his image on their clothing and YouTube is bursting at the seams with homages to him.

It is definitely his to win -- or to lose.

It all hinges on two things: likability and character.

Obama certainly is likable enough; no one gives “speech” better than the Illinois senator.

Yet what about character? Because of Obama’s newness and his lack of testing under difficult political circumstances, what do we know about his character?

“Read 'Dreams from My Father' and then tell me about character,” says Democrat strategist Mark Siegel.

Siegel brushes aside some character judgments that Obama made in the last week, such as breaking his pledge to accept public financing and a promise to the left side of his base on the FISA wiretapping bill.

Then there was the Obama “seal,” of which one Democrat strategist said, “You may as well have put it on his head, called it a helmet and drove him around in a tank.”

Siegel disagrees. “I actually am kind of excited about a Democratic candidate who cares about winning and seems to know how to win, who actually has some lead in his pencil. I'm sure Dukakis, Gore and Kerry would have done a lot of wonderful things as president, but they never got the chance. Barack Obama will.”

Purdue political scientist Bert Rockman says New York Times columnist David Brooks has it right on character regarding Obama: “He's a tough-as-nails politician who will do what he has to do. In some respects, that will stand him in good stead; in other respects, not so much.”

Rockman says that Obama has first-in-his-class intelligence and the ability to listen and absorb. “In my estimation,” he explains, “that is the trait most needed in a president and one that has been sorely lacking in the current president.

“All politicians would throw their mothers overboard if they had to. Obama is no different, nor is McCain,” he notes. “But McCain, like Bush and Reagan, thinks with his gut. Obama thinks with his head. That's a big difference and a crucial one.” Continued...