NDIANAPOLIS - Barack Obama's success in this campaign is a puzzle. How is it that a youngish first-term senator with so many disadvantages - a slight résumé, a foreign-sounding name, an exotic background, a professorial manner, a thoroughly liberal voting record and a skin color unlike any previous president - has come so far, and even leads in national polls with a week to go? He does have some things going for him, of course: his rhetorical skill, his unflappability and not least of all a financial crisis that reflects badly on the party occupying the White House. "There are...