It's as if inside the White House the belief in Obama's inspirational charisma is still such that every time the ugliness of brute politics intrudes, it's a startling revelation.

Corporate communications will become a high-tech art, just as political communication is for Obama.

I think that big, sort of theatrical relaunches tend to set you up for failure and hype.

Give Obama a script he has made his own, and he is the motivational speaker to end all speakers. Tony Robbins cloned with Honest Abe.

Who was Amanda Knox? Was she a fresh-faced honor student from Seattle who met anyone's definition of an all-American girl - attractive, athletic, smart, hard-working, adventuresome, in love with languages and travel? Or was her pretty face a mask, a duplicitous cover for a depraved soul?

It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept referring sneeringly to Obama's meager resume - 'a mere community organizer!' - before he entered electoral politics. It was Obama's experience as a community organizer that proved such a killer app when he applied that skill to the Internet.

The Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes wrote that beauty is fundamental. Well, with the poet's permission, so is courage.

Obama's stern demeanor punctuated by intermittent flashes of his wide, relaxing smile is his greatest weapon in defusing pent-up angst.