"The greatest thing about Obama isn't really about Obama at all, per se."

As a man of words myself, I admire Mark Morford, my favorite columnist for the SF Chronicle. He regularly pours out such a torrent of verbal pyrotechnics that it's sometimes overwhelming. But today's column has a soberness, a restraint, that strikes deeper than many of the shards of wit he normally launches. I think he has found the most hopeful sign for our long dreary, sad, painful time. His news:

It's actually about, well, us.

This is the great revelation: We still got it. The collective unconscious, the deep sense of inner wisdom, that intuitive knowing that borders on a kind of mystical proficiency, where millions of people can actually look beyond rhetoric and media spin and merely feel the presence of something great in the room? Yep, still there. Who knew?

See, this is what I hear most from relatives and readers and friends and newborn activists who were never activists before: Obama speaks to the intuition.

Archive of Morford's articles.

Friend Chris Raymond responded with this intelligent insight:

Yeah, I totally totally agree with this....on every point. Obama gives me
hope, not because I really think he can change everything that has become so
corrupted, but because there are so many of us who are responding to his
leadership. For all the right reasons. That is why I am hopeful.

Yes, it's not about him so much as about US, what people can do to change things. It'll take a long time and probably involve sacrifices. What we need is leadership, the intelligence and temperament to bring together disparate resources and go forward out of the quagmire we have sunk into these past 8 years.