A New Hope
| March 06, 2008
By JANN S. WENNER
The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent - with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you - it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary.
...Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign - one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign - from Day One - than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn't even seem tempting to him.
Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.
