This has been sitting on my monitor without a title or category for quite a while.

He's Comfortable in His Skin -- Now It's Our Turn
By Sandy Banks
Sandy Banks is a Times editorial writer.
March 13, 2005

Barack Obama's fans, legions and growing, imagine a day when this new rock star of politics strides into the Oval Office.

The junior senator from Illinois insists that he has no immediate designs on the White House. But even if Obama, 43, runs as an octogenarian —  and even though he has been diplomatically dismantling racial and political boundaries since he became, in 1990, the first black president of the Harvard Law Review —  his candidacy would make this country squirm and shudder and maybe even come unglued.

On the other side of the link is a bit of commentary wrapped around a fragment of an interview...basically a puff piece. And I think what slowed me down (beyond the mere lack of coffee, I mean) was trying to connect the title to the content. Determining who is meant by "our" is key in determining what the content is.

At this point Senator Obama is a media image in my mind. Not the whole media image because I haven't read his autobiography...maybe I should. But I've read just about every major story in the news that he's appeared in from my functionalist perspective. I've done this for functionalist reasons...like it or not the Senator will be a lens and light on racial relations in American just as General Powell is. Watching his national image develop is interesting.

One thing that I've had confirmed is that the time of charismatic leadership has never ended...and I am not talking about in the Black community. Should have been obvious to me...every evangelical minister is a charismatic leader. Hell, Bush is one.

This is a significant bit of information to add to the discussion about Black leadership.