Born to a free-spirited white mother and a black Kenyan absentee father, Mr. Obama spent his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia. As part of a younger generation of black leaders, he represents the success — but not the historic struggle — of the civil rights movement. And his upstart campaign for the Democratic nomination, using a mantra of hope and change combined with tech-savvy, unconventional organization, helped him surpass one of America's most prominent political establishments, the Clintons, to become the first African-American to lead a major party ticket.

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Between earning degrees at Columbia and Harvard, Mr. Obama spent two years as a community organizer on Chicago‘s impoverished South Side. Left frustrated by the experience, he decided to pursue change as an insider and won a seat in the Illinois state senate. Mr. Obama has written of his “spooky good fortune” in politics, but his career includes one glaring political miscalculation — an ill-fated bid to unseat Bobby L. Rush, a former activist and a hero to black voters, in Congress.

Some accused Mr. Obama of impatience when he chose to seek the Democratic nomination just two years into his first U.S. Senate term. He faced a difficult decision after his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when his proclamation that “We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don‘t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States” propelled him to party stardom. Armed with his charisma and his public stance against the Iraq war before the 2003 invasion, Mr. Obama chose to run despite his comparatively little experience on the national stage.

Mr. Obama, known for his emphasis on the big picture and a tendency to delegate, has been called “post-racial” and “post-partisan.” “I am like a Rorschach test,” he said in an interview with The New York Times this past summer. “Even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something.” Mr. Obama has carefully eschewed identifying too closely with his party, despite a fairly liberal voting record. His campaign‘s innovative internet organization both dovetailed with his call for a new kind of politics and helped him raise record amounts of money from small and large donors alike. He is a regular on the basketball court and at the gym, and his comparative youth and lofty oratory inspired comparisons to John F. Kennedy.

Despite his focus on unity, his victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton caused lingering resentments among her supporters. Critics call him an empty vessel, a charge fueled by his decisions to decline public financing and support an expansion of government surveillance powers after the election, both shifts from earlier positions.

Mr. Obama lives with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park.

Senator John McCain has worked to build a reputation of taking no one‘s orders but his own. Mr. McCain‘s image as a maverick remains a central justification for his presidential campaign, though that image has been diminished somewhat by his efforts to mend fences with some Republicans during his quest to become president.

The son and grandson of Navy admirals, Mr. McCain went from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy to war hero after refusing preferential treatment and enduring five years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967. His military experiences continue to inform his views about war.

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Though always supportive of the Iraq war, Mr. McCain was harshly critical of the Bush administration‘s — and especially former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld‘s — handling of the conflict. He was an early proponent of troop escalation in Iraq, which was adopted in early 2007. He has also confronted the White House for its advocacy of interrogation methods that he considers torture.

Upon returning from Vietnam, Mr. McCain got his first taste of Congress as the Navy‘s Senate liaison, where the dry, hip, macho war hero became a favorite. He won his own House seat in 1982, and he came to the Senate four years later a rising star. But he was nearly brought down in 1991 by his involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal. Though he was ultimately exonerated, an ethics inquiry determined that Mr. McCain used “poor judgment” in intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a political contributor‘s savings and loan operation.

“It was certainly the most difficult experience in my political life,” he said of the period, and friends say it influenced his crusade against the influence of money in politics, angering Republicans by putting his name to the so-called “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance reform bill. Republican frustration with Mr. McCain is not limited to campaign finance. His presidential campaign was nearly destroyed in 2007 by his support of comprehensive immigration legislation, and in the past he called some leaders of the religious right “agents of intolerance.” Nonetheless, the constituency he built up during his 2000 race and his propensity to switch sides on a number of issues have made him one of the Senate&lsqou;s most influential figures. His efforts in recent years to mend fences with some Republican factions has compromised his independent persona somewhat, including meeting with the evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, voting to extend Mr. Bush‘s tax cuts and backing an enforcement-only immigration bill.

Mr. McCain lives in Phoenix with his second wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, an heiress to a beer distribution. The couple has four children. Mr. McCain also has a daughter from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1980.