With less than two years under his belt as a United States senator from the Land of Lincoln, Barack Hussein Obama is viewed by many as presidential material. Such a view has probably increased exponentially in the aftermath of the Democrats' triumph over the Republicans in the recent congressional midterm elections. Very few people will deny that junior Senator Obama is an attractive prospect as a potential presidential candidate: He's light, bright, and half white, and possesses telegenic charisma, which makes him appealing to some who don't like squirming before the demands or accusations of black politicos such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or, God forbid, Louis Farrakhan.

There hasn't been this much excitement about a politician in the last forty, fifty years, Bill Clinton notwithstanding. Described by John McCain's senior adviser, Mark McKinnon, as a "walking, talking hope machine" who "may reshape American politics," Obama may well be this era's John F. Kennedy, a man who personifies hope, renewal, reconciliation, dynamism, and the willingness to go beyond slash-and-burn politics.

The child of a white mother and Kenyan father, Obama doesn't have the same African American pedigree as most blacks in the United States; he's not seen as weighted down with the social baggage of racial "grievances" attributed to other blacks and their political representatives in the post-civil rights regime where racism is of a bygone era. He transcends race by not reminding white Americans of that troublesome and unfinished business of race.

Or, as political commentator Harold Meyerson noted, Obama is "post-racial."