NEW YORK -- Two presidential candidates, two celebrity interviewers, two agendas, one audience: the undecided superdelegates likely to select the Democratic nominee.

Two days before primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, the ritual of the Sunday news show became high drama as Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton each made hour-long solo appearances -- Obama on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Clinton on ABC's "This Week."

For Obama, the grilling by host Tim Russert offered an opportunity to put the uproar surrounding his former pastor behind him. For Clinton, the town hall-style appearance with her husband's one-time press secretary, George Stephanopoulos, gave her the chance to burnish her populist message and persuade skeptical voters to like and trust her.

Obama has been forced to contend with explosive comments made by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Russert noted that Obama already knew of some of his pastor's anti-American statements from widely viewed snippets of Wright's sermons on cable news and the Internet. Why did he break from Wright only after the minister's appearance in Washington last week, Russert asked?

"I thought it was important for him to explain or at least to provide context for some of the things he said previously," Obama said.

"Not only did he amplify some of those comments and defend them vigorously, he added to it. He put gasoline on the fire," Obama said. "Not only was he interested in using this platform to make statements I fundamentally disagree with and offend me, he didn't have much regard for the moment we're in right now in the United States."

Obama said it was fair for voters to question his judgment in light of the Wright controversy, but he said he hoped they would do so in the context of his overall career.

Obama showed a bit more passion when asked whether he would be vulnerable to a "Swift Boat"-style attack on his patriotism if he were to face Republican John McCain in the fall.

"I have never challenged other people's patriotism," he said. "I haven't challenged Hillary Clinton's or John McCain's and I will not stand by and allow somebody else to challenge mine."

He also got in a couple of jabs at the former first lady, calling her proposed gas-tax holiday a "pander" and her vow to "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel nothing more than unhelpful bluster.

Clinton, for her part, turned in a feisty performance on "This Week."

Taking advantage of Obama's vulnerabilities among working-class voters, the New York senator continued to fashion herself as a champion of their concerns -- in part by criticizing trade deals and sticking by her much-criticized proposal to lift the federal gas tax this summer.

"I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hardworking Americans," Clinton said when pressed on why no prominent economists support the gas-tax holiday. "I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."

Clinton insisted she had opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement during her husband's presidency, although there is little evidence to suggest she worked against it at the time.