When Barack Obama announced his intention to run for President early last year, many thought his candidacy would be interesting; few thought it would be successful. Then came the videos and audio of Barack Obama's pastor and friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, broadcasting a racially divisive and un-American creed that cast even greater doubt on an Obama candidacy. Senator Obama reassured many that Wright's view of America was not his view, saying what so many of us truly believed in our hearts and minds. Despite the ranting and raving of later-day racialists and those who still had their doubts about the meaning of our nation's founding, Barack Obama said that the U.S. "Constitution […] had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law," that it was "a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time."