Quote Originally Posted by darkshadow
I think Kakashi is more then able to defend konoha from akatsuki, cept Pein was just.... well fucking Pein, and so far madara seems to be untouchable to anyone. But besides those 2, I'm sure Kakashi could've handled all of the other ones.
My point is based on the fact that Kakashi has fought members of Akatsuki already and has not "handled" them. With Deidara, Naruto was there (eventhough he was being a dumbass) and Deidara did not have enough explosive clay to really fight the way he would have (which we saw when he fought Sasuke). With Kakuzu, he didn't pop out the Mangekyou, but he was also not alone in that fight. I doubt that Kakashi would have been able to overpower Kakuzu in a 1v1 situation.

I feel that for the most part, most Kages should be able to take on a member of Akatsuki 1v1, excluding Pain and Madara mostly. If a kage does not signify at least the strength to defeat most other non-kage ninjas, then what is the point of putting emphasis on it? Hell even Gaara probably would have won against Deidara if it wasn't for him protecting the actual village. The best example is Jiraiya. After seeing him fight in Sage mode, it became kind of obvious that Jiraiya was strong enough to defend Konoha vs. any member of Akatsuki (barring Madara). Even Pain admitted that if Jiraiya knew his secret, he would have lost. Kakashi needs to be at least as strong as Jiraiya!

My point is that Kishi needs to write a few more fights where Kakashi elevates his status to Kage level before actually making him the Hokage if he intends for that to happen. If not, he's just setting up Kakashi as high-level fodder, which is lame as hell.