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Obama's great asset has always been an ability to maintain his air of authority without being baritone about it. He can be boring, but he is never ridiculous or pompous.

Obama's pop-cultural focus may seem demeaning to the office of the presidency. It may be mockable. But it is also tremendously effective.

Did I say that the President's entire job is image management? Of course not.

When I hear Obama speak he just seems really sincere and he just seems like somebody who actually has his heart and his motivation in the right place. Forget about color or race or gender or whatever, he's got his heart in the right place.

Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm; he's cool; he's self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.

I don't pay a lot of attention, frankly, to what Barack Obama says.

President Obama has created the image of an America under President Bush that routinely violated international law.

Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.

President Obama has his faults, but overall, I think, is a good president.

Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history - as befits a former law professor - and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.