More Than Charisma

By BOB HERBERT
NYT

Boston

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.

(More here.)