"On the death penalty, Mr. Obama wrote in his memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” (Crown, 2007), that the penalty “does little to deter crime.” But he added that society has the right to express outrage at heinous crimes. During his 2004 Senate campaign, he publicly supported the death penalty, even as he called the justice system flawed and urged a moratorium on executions." "Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes...