It's A Bright Obama Day

Let Digby and John Amato parse for ideological purity. For the rest of us, today means that our long national nightmare is finally over. Whatever problems we might face, we once again have a leadership that will face them with intelligence, honesty and hope.

And if you want a very cool, offbeat look at Obama's leadership style, check out this piece by Alexander Wolff about the role that basketball has played in his life. It's a breathtaking, behind-the-back pass that connects up stories you might have already heard in some really interesting ways, and I love this passage:

Elizabeth Alexander is handling poetry duties at the Inauguration, but Obama himself could serve ably as bard of the new First Sport. In Dreams from My Father, his 1995 memoir, he captures both the cadences and the beguiling essence of the game: "And something else, too, something nobody talked about: a way of being together when the game was tight and the sweat broke and the best players stopped worrying about their points and the worst players got swept up in the moment and the score only mattered because that's how you sustained the trance. In the middle of which you might make a move or a pass that surprised even you, so that even the guy guarding you had to smile, as if to say, 'Damn....' "