If the only thing you cared about was winning an election, would you rather be (a) John McCain, the candidate who had forged a political alliance with the least popular incumbent president in recent American history, or would you rather be (b) Barack Obama, the candidate whose ex-pastor had repeatedly made statements that much of the electorate had found offensive?

Purely based on electability, I'd pick Obama any day of the week -- and two recent surveys support that decision. In late April, an NBC/WSJ poll determined that Bush was a more significant albatross for McCain than Wright is for Obama (at least in the opinion of voters). Today, Gallup crunches numbers from another recent survey and comes up with the same result: