Destiny's Child

Over the past two years, Obama has come to adopt this worldview as his own. He came back fascinated from a quick trip to a U.S. project in Ethiopia, where American soldiers had parachuted in to help the victims of a flood: "By investing now," he said, "we avoid an Iraq or Afghanistan later." The foreign-policy initiatives he has fought for and passed have followed this model: He has secured money to fight avian flu, improve security in the Congo and safeguard Russian nuclear weapons. "My comment is not meant to be unkind to mainstream Democrats," says Lugar, "but it seems to me that Barack is studying issues that are very important for the country and for the world."

When I meet with Obama in his office, it becomes clear that his study of foreign policy has only deepened his belief in the potential of American power. "In Africa, you often see that the difference between a village where everybody eats and a village where people starve is government," he tells me. "One has a functioning government, and the other does not. Which is why it bothers me when I hear Grover Norquist or someone say that government is the enemy. They don't understand the fundamental role that government plays."

There are limitations to this view of the world, of course, and there are those who believe that for all his study, Obama has been too cautious on the big issues. When he was running for the Senate, Obama was an early and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. "I think our foreign policy has been all bluster and saber-rattling and continued mistakes over the last several years," he says. But since he arrived in the Senate, many of those who hoped Obama would become a great liberal champion have been disappointed. He has voted with conservatives on tort reform and industry-friendly provisions in the bankruptcy bill, and the troop-pullout bill he introduced in January was a late and unremarkable entry in the debate over Iraq. "Those of us in the Chicago progressive community still believe in Barack Obama," says Joel Bleifuss, editor of the left-wing magazine In These Times. "But at the moment we're pretty much taking it on faith."

"Obama has set himself a very high bar," says Michael Franc, a conservative scholar at the Heritage Foundation. "People like him for being a fresh face, an out-of-the-box thinker. But on the matrix of issues that will decide this election — Iraq, Iran, the war on terrorism — I haven't seen anything from him that strays very far from conventional liberal thinking. To the extent that he sounds like just another Democrat, he's needlessly ceding an advantage he might otherwise create for himself."

Obama seems to recognize that he is caught between the public's eagerness for a fresh approach and its desire for a John Wayne figure who will stand tall against the terrorists. "What we've seen from the Bush administration is a lot of tough talk and poor decisions," he says, as if acknowledging a painful political truth. "But people do want tough."

Over the past six months, as Obama has drawn closer to declaring his candidacy, there have been the beginnings of the first real backlash against him. In early November, the Chicago papers ran a series of stories detailing his relationship with a crooked developer, Tony Rezko. In a complicated but legal deal with Rezko, who bought a vacant lot next door to Obama's in Chicago, the senator was able to secure his own house at $300,000 below the asking price. The Chicago Sun-Times gleefully headlined its account from media darling to media-hounded. The report uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing, but its emergence serves as a reminder that Obama cannot remain above the fray forever. The more successful he is at positioning himself as a political outsider, the more he will inevitably be subjected to the same forces that hobble political insiders. This is the unavoidable truth about falling in love with politicians: The time comes when you have to give them up.

With Obama, there are crowds — always the crowds. In December, in what marked the true beginning of his presidential campaign, he traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire, to test the political waters. The crowd begins with the retirees: Three hours before Obama is due to arrive, hobbling eighty-year-olds show up and badger the staff like teeny-boppers, trying to figure out which entrance the senator will use so they can catch a glimpse of him up close. The creaky old political operatives on hand debate whether this crowd was larger than the one they had seen when John F. Kennedy came to town. One woman compares Obama to Jesus.

In other politicians, charisma often seems like compensation for some deeper, irreducible need: Bill Clinton comes so close, and listens so closely, because he wants to be hugged; George Bush slaps backs and gives his best friends nicknames because he, the draft-dodging son of a fighter pilot, needs to be the manliest creature in the room. With Obama, the charisma seems to stem from a remarkable ease with himself. When Frank Luntz, the conservative political consultant, walked into the young senator's office for the first time, Obama sat on the couch and gestured for Luntz to take the big, formal chair behind the desk. "I've been in many, many senators' offices, and never once have I been offered the senator's chair," Luntz says. "I asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'If I knew you any better, I'd be lying down.' What he was saying was that he was so comfortable with who he was, there was no need for any pretense or power trips."

Now, as Obama takes the stage, his charisma is almost palpable. He speaks about a young soldier he met, returned from Iraq: "An explosion had shattered his face. He had been blinded in both eyes. . . . His arm was no longer functioning. He had two young daughters, just like I do." Meeting the soldier, Obama recalls, "I looked not at him but at his wife, who loved him so much. You thought about their lives going forward." The lesson the senator took from the meeting, he says, was this: "Politics is not a sport. The debates we have in Washington are not about tactical advantages. They are about who we are as people, what we believe in and what we are willing to do to make sure we have a country that our children deserve." Afterward, he signs autographs in the crowd for what seems like hours: He can't, he won't, get away.

This kind of thing has its own effect, a ratcheting-up of the natural tendency of politicians to love themselves as much as the crowds do. In every politician, himself included, Obama says, there is "that ego-driven ambition that I want to be somebody. I want to be in front of the microphone, I want to be in front of the TV, I want to be the most important guy on the committee, I want it to be my bill." You can see this cockiness seeping through. Asked at fund-raisers whether the new role he's assumed is taking a toll on him, Obama waves it off: "Nah, I'm a thoroughbred."

"Look, there's no real preparation for a presidential race," says David Axelrod, Obama's chief political adviser. "Hillary Clinton, there's no question, she's played the course, she knows the sand traps and the lie of the greens. McCain's been through it once before, too. My feeling about this is, we don't know exactly how Barack will respond. I'll be really frank with you: Barack doesn't know exactly how he'll respond."