George Bush has anointed Barack Obama the Democratic candidate for President, predicting he would negotiate with terrorists, and no less an authority than Joe Klein has declared the (extremely) junior senator from Illinois the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination. So we can safely pause for a moment in this long-running story to wonder how the hell he pulled it off.
To arrive on Time’s May 19 cover and in Bush’s recent speech to the Knesset, Obama came from left field to redefine American politics. (Time’s headline pronounced Obama "the game-changer.") Along the way, he triumphed over obstacles that would have killed a traditional politician, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright debacle (twice) and the "God, guns and xenophobia" debacle. Most recently, he rejected Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s idea for a gas tax holiday and got away with it unscathed.