The Road to History

Indelible images from the longest, costliest and, quite possibly, most surprising presidential campaign of all time

By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2009

Just another politician.

All over America, the phrase rolls out and hangs there with fiery contempt. There goes just another politician dragging us all down some financial sinkhole, through some sex scandal, into some rocking-and-rolling hell of a war where the math doesn't add up and the living keep dying.

So what happens when a significant portion of the populace decides that someone isn't just another politician? It has happened before, often in times of desperation. The whirl of emotion can be so strong, so sudden, that it seems to almost magically magnify both the hunger of the electorate and the gifts of the politician.

Even potential opponents, or those who watch the ever-growing crowds without finding the magic, don't see just another politician. They see a sorcerer who has the unnerving ability to lift folk up out of their sleep and send them marching, probably to no good end.

But savior or pretender or something in between, his appearances fill the hollow valleys and crowd the city squares. Neither the ice in Iowa nor the heat in Florida comes to bother. The hills of West Virginia pose no challenge, nor the infinite landscape of Montana. The devoted and the curious will stand through drifting snow, pelting rain, wilting heat, as season becomes season, and history nears.

(More here.)