'The Audacity of Hope'

That first weekend after the election, Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, decided to go see "Ray" at the movie theater in their Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. As they settled into their seats, a friend called out, "Barack!" and the audience turned around and began clapping. A few days later, when the Obamas went to another movie, this time with their daughters Malia, 6, and Sasha, 3, it happened again--sustained applause for the new junior senator from Illinois.

Anyone who has ever seen a senator in public knows that this kind of thing just doesn't happen outside of staged campaign events. In fact, when they show up at ball games, politicians are often booed. Obama--the self-described "skinny kid with a funny name" and first African-American male Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate--is unlikely to stay so popular, but he's already in a different category of fame.

A Tiger Woods category. A David Letterman and "Will & Grace" category (Grace said in a fall episode that she dreamed she was in the shower with Obama, who was "Ba-racking my world!"). A Robert F. Kennedy or Hillary Clinton comes-to-the-Senate category, where the national publicity upon their election exceeds that received by most senators in their entire careers. "I'm so overexposed I make Paris Hilton look like a recluse," Obama joked at Washington's Gridiron Club dinner in early December. "I figure there's nowhere to go from here but down, so tonight I'm announcing my retirement from the United States Senate."

Of course there's another direction to go than down, and desperate Democrats--viewing Obama's electrifying speech at the Democratic convention and landslide victory as about the only good news in a dismal election year--are already talking about him on the ticket in 2008. Although he will inevitably make most shortlists for vice president (and at 43, he's the same age JFK was when he was elected president), this speculation is almost comically premature for an incoming senator. But it does allow Obama to use what his Harvard Law School classmate Ken Mehlman, soon to be chairman of the Republican Party, calls his "star power" to work with the GOP on bridging Red-Blue divisions and getting some things done. The son of a black economist from Kenya and a white teacher from Kansas might be uniquely qualified to nudge the country toward the color purple.

"One party seems to be defending a moribund status quo, and the other is defending an oligarchy," he says coolly. "It's not a very attractive choice." Obama's a Blue State Democrat, all right, and by most standards a liberal one. But Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an architect of President Clinton's "Third Way" approach, sees him as a bridge from the left to the center of the spectrum: "Not just a phenomenal writer--he wrote that convention speech himself--but incredibly pragmatic."

Some party constituencies might be in for a surprise. Obama may be the only African-American in the Senate, but this is not a man who wants to be seen as the leader of black America. When he spoke at a Congressional Black Caucus reception recently, Obama graciously thanked several caucus leaders by name, then concluded with a short but telling statement: "I'm looking forward to working with you on behalf of all Americans."