Bob Herbert:More Than Charisma

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/opinion/24herbert.html?ref=opinion

On a rainy October night in 2006, I took a cab to the John F. Kennedy library here to conduct a very public interview. As we pulled up, the driver asked, “Who’s on the program?”

“Barack Obama,” I said.

“Oh,” he replied, “our next president.”

I mentioned this to then-Senator Obama during the program and he got a good laugh out of it. He hadn’t yet announced that he was running. The capacity crowd in the auditorium was clear about what it wanted. It cheered every mention of a possible run. Obama-mania was already well under way, and it would only grow.

I was back at the library this week to interview Gwen Ifill about her new book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” and I wondered aloud about this continuing love affair with all things Obama — the feverish excitement, the widespread joy and pride, and the remarkable surge of hope in an otherwise downbeat, if not depressing, period.

(snip)
But I’ve seen charismatic politicians and pretty families come and go like sunrises and sunsets over the years. There was something more that was making people go ga-ga over Obama. Something deeper.

We’ve been watching that something this week, and it’s called leadership. Mr. Obama has been feeding the almost desperate hunger in this country for mature leadership, for someone who is not reckless and clownish, shortsighted and self-absorbed.

And I think that Obama will only continue to grow in his wisdom and maturity as his tenure continues.

K&R

But, I was wrong.

Whoooo Obama-maniaaaaaaa

I said to a friend, "He was sworn in, and the whole world changed." That's how it feels, doesn't it?

My young, thirty-something friend, an Obama supporter from 'way back, said to me that he felt, for the first time in his life, that he was finally seeing what "a real President looks like."

He's right.

Obama is a grownup and that's what we've needed for so long.

Its going to be a fun, fascinating, mind-blowing and affirming 8 years.