Obama (Ba)ROCKS!
Newsweek

By Jonathan Alter

Dec. 27/Jan. 3 issue

Barack Obama, according to his spouse, Michelle,  "is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”  She emphasizes that there's nothing inevitable about Obama's running for president or even staying in the Senate if he doesn't feel he's making a difference.

Running in the primary against white candidates, [Obama] did extremely well in heavily white areas. This is not about "diversity" (a word he recognizes as horribly overused) but about “embracing our hybrid origins and transcending our often narrow-minded past.”

The task now, Obama says, is…for Democrats to "reclaim and reassert in very explicit language that our best ideas rise out of communal values."

Yet Obama…is fully prepared to step into a leadership role for the Democrats.  Incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who calls Obama "a gentleman and a scholar," expects him to travel abroad as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and fit in well in the clubby Senate, where Obama has hired defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's chief of staff to run his office.

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