As for Barack Obama, he is 47 and has been in the Senate for four years. A graduate of Columbia (Bachelor's), he worked for three years as a community organizer in Chicago and then attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He married a fellow Harvard Law graduate, then became a lecturer at the University of Chicago law school. He is a member of the United Church of Christ. After serving eight years in the Illinois State Senate, from 1996 to 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
There, Obama's record has been broadly liberal. Americans for Democratic Action award him 95 points out of 100; the American Conservative Union rates him at 6. In November 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal from Iraq, starting in 2006. But he has also generally worked well with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in the Foreign Relations Committee.
In January 2006, Obama told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" that "I will not" run for president or vice president in 2008, but on Oct. 22 that year he went on "Meet the Press" again and told Russert he had "thought about the possibility." Today, two years later, he's running.
So there you have it -- the essentials concerning next week's presidential candidates (or as many of them as can be fitted into a column the size of this one).
You pays your money and you takes your choice.