he doesnt look a thing like jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young.

(note for posterity: this post is being written the day after obama swept the 'potomac primaries.')

Senator Barack Obama on Monday at a rally at the University of Maryland in College Park. (the times)

ntending to write yet another obama post, it crossed my mind that maybe i should begin with something akin to 'sorry to turn this into the barack basilica as of late, but...'

then i realized, that's the whole bloody point!

many people think the appeal of obama - or, more specifically, why hes more appealing than hillary - basically begins and ends with charisma. theyre close, but theyre missing the crucial pt. it's not so much that hes charismatic than that hes inspiring.

im a case in pt. im a dyed in the wool democrat, and following politics has been one of my hobbies since i was knee high to a grasshopper. but two months ago, before i took a close look at obama, i couldnt have imagined writing this many posts about a candidate during the freaking primaries. thing is, i feel compelled to. there's something about the way he speaks, the way he carries himself, that makes me want to not only get in the boat with him, but to pick up an oar. and if there are no oars left, ill use a classily cupped hand.

he makes me wonder at what i could do with my life.

and i know im far from alone in having this feeling. last night on msnbc, chris matthews said, paraphrasing, that when obama speaks, he distills a feeling we have about america at its best. it's a feeling of hope and inspiration, and it's invaluable. if you read a transcript of an obama speech, and saw how many times he uses the word 'hope,' you might want to throw up. but when you see and listen to him saying these things, they dont come off as platitudes at all, b.c they just corroborate this wonderful feeling obama plants inside you.

say what you want about the things clinton or obama might do in government - and supporters of both will freely admit the two candidates have displayed, at most, incremental differences in policy - but i cant even imagine clinton having obama's effect outside of government. ie, where most of us really live. (she would have displayed this power by now, if she had it.)

the idea that, as president, obama can get people believing in themselves on an individual basis, transcends anything a president can do with a pen or the bully pulpit. and even on a policy level, on the level of the 'nuts and bolts' and 'gears' of the govt, id have to assume that if obama has this effect on tv, he has it in meetings with people he has to negotiate with. as president, both clinton and obama would have to sell their ideas behind closed doors, and obama is, hands down, the greatest salesman ive ever seen. he makes you feel like youve been crawling in the desert for forty years and he's a six-foot bottle of liquid ecstasy. i see this as an effective way to hammer important policy through a stubborn government.

again, it's not just me. notice:


two minstrels in the union square subway station a coupla weeks ago. ive never seen people do this for another candidate. i mean, here's two musicians, who prolly have 'better' things to do, and they decided, 'let's go play music in union square to support obama!' i just dont see clinton inspiring people in this way.

then there's my friend mattypants and i. we play scra on facebook. recently weve been making bets wherein the loser donates money to obama's campaign. and for our first bet, both winner and loser had to pony up. how many clintonistas are doing this, ya think?

and of course, there's the the yes we can video, which btw has a wikipedia entry. this is the gleaming example. there's a reason all those people came together to create that song/video, which btw, sends a shiver down my spine every time.

hillary put out her own answer to yes we can, but she too got it wrong. i actually like the video, called 'hillary and the band,' but it parodies - successfully - obama's charisma. it doesnt parody obmama's ability to inspire, because of course, that would be impossible to parody.

* * *

on a separate note, id like to say something about the dense, obtuse, crass, inexorably inevitable, very possibly worthwhile and certainly binary is-it-more-important-to-elect-a-black-man-or-a-white-woman-president question.

this morning i realized that for this election, the question is moot, on account of disqualification. obama is a ridiculously charming and inspiring person. for the first black candidate ever, he might be the 'best' candidate, of any race, well ever see. clinton has got to be an average female candidate; youd think well see a much better one at some pt. that sounds harsh, but whatevs.

as these things often go, after i thought this to myself, i picked up the times, and maureen dowd had said basically the same thing in her in her op-ed today:

As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.

Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.

As a senator, she was not a leading voice on important issues, and her Iraq vote was about her political viability.

She told New York magazine’s John Heilemann that before Iowa taught her that she had to show her soft side, “I really believed I had to prove in this race from the very beginning that a woman could be president and a woman could be commander in chief. I thought that was my primary mission.”

If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours.

Senator Barack Obama at a campaign rally at
the Virginia Beach Convention Center on Sunday. (the times)