But in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama would have a new set of deficits.Just 47 years old and only four years into a national political career,he has never run anything larger than his campaign. He began his run for president while he was still getting lost in Washington, a city he does not yet know well. His promises are as vast as his résumé is short, and some of his pledges are competing ones: progressive rule and centrist red-blue fusion; wholesale transformation and down-to-earth pragmatism.
Mr. Obama’s ambition and confidence have long confounded critics and annoyed rivals. In 2006, the still-new United States senator appeared before Washington’s elite at the spring dinner of the storied Gridiron Club, and as tradition dictated, roasted himself. He ticked off the evidence of his popularity: the Democratic convention speech that had won him national celebrity, the best-selling books, the magazine covers.
“Really, what else is there to do?” he said in mock innocence. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”
He passed a few. By the end of the year, he was running for president.[...]
There is little Mr. Obama has controlled more tightly than his own story and message. Just as he was planning his entry into politics, he used “Dreams From My Father” to cast his peripatetic, confusing childhood into a lyrical journey. When he was elected to the United States Senatein 2004, Mr. Obama wrote his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,”laying out his political philosophy. It meant getting only three or four hours of sleep at night, his editor said, but he insisted on writing the entire thing himself’. (He not only read policy books to prepare, but also some of the articles cited in their footnotes.) For his presidential campaign speechwriter, he chose a 26-year-old who describes his job as channeling the thoughts of a boss who already knows what he wants to say.[...]
Obama is the ultimate candidate of the television era. He is all sparkle, no substance. He is a character just as much as any on TV except that there is no actor behind him with a real life. And as a character, he is perfect for the job of president as he resembles every Hollywood created Democratic president - young, handsome, great speaker. Just as the president always figures out how to save the world in the movie just in time to leave audiences with a happy ending, so the American public figures that Obama will be able to do that to.
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