Why I like Obama, but won't vote for him.

I like Obama. He really is a charming fellow. That's saying a lot considering I have never met the guy or read anything he has written and I am decidedly on the Republican side of the vote. He seems to have this almost dazzling effect on me. It's no wonder he's been the media darling. I've tried to figure it out, what do we like about him? It's almost conniving the way I am lured by his smile and candor. He's confident but not smug. He's young, good looking and cool enough that you wish he was your teacher, professor, boss, dad or even friend. His charisma, much akin to J. F. Kennedy's, has given him the ability to draw larger crowds for an election run than has been seen in recent US history. He seems to have all the qualities one would want in a leader: strength, courage, self-confidence, vision and determination. And yes, he does seem to exude this sense of... this atmosphere of "hope". However, it seems as though just as I begin to be lulled to sleep by his sweet song of hope, his scintillating discourse of a world with out problems I suddenly "snap-to", like someone has just flushed the toilet while I was showering in Obama's rhetoric. Thoughts of uncertainty flood my mind and I begin to feel vulnerable and even scared for our future as a country. What about the issues he has been skating around? His Muslim background (our greatest enemy is a radically violent albeit jilted muslim), his true perception of this "White America" (I can only imagine what J.Wright, his one time mentor for 20 years with whom he grew up spiritually, has suggested. White is bad? America is white and so America is bad? Black people are handed the shorter stick from the white man? White Americans owe the Black Americans something? I wouldn't want any of that divisive sentiment boiling in the mind of our Country's leader) and his plan of attack and defense against our enemies (Is he really thinking that sitting down with our enemies is a good idea? Why?). The truth is, I don't feel like Obama has satisfied these issues, these elephants you might say, that have been congregating in my mind. Sure you can point me to transcripts and You Tube videos and show me when, where and how he "addressed" these items but in all of those videos and speeches he seems to methodically and effortlessly skirt around the questions and issues so smoothly that one never notices he craftily avoided them. By the end of his dissertation you feel harmonious inside. You want to hug your dog, call your mother and contact all the people you've had differences with and and apologize. Meanwhile, back on planet earth, back in the USA, the leading democratic candidate has never answered the questions he was posed. Never directly disarmed the proverbial ticking time bomb that is issues counting down in the back of our minds. For some reason we seem to be comfortably asleep with the notion that he, Barack Obama, is at the wheel and will get us where we want to be safely.