This is more analysis and commentary than journalistic reportage, but it is worth reading and thinking about. This is a complex analysis that unaccountably flits past key interludes such as the 2000 and 2004 elections, of all things, not to mention 9/11, but which does point to some fundamental factors governing the national cultural and political bifurcation, bringing religion and belief, identity and history into focus in a way too few analyses do. More sense of how fully Obama's identity is felt among the majority of voters would be useful; it seems to me that most people still have very little idea of who Obama is. He is an image, as Sullivan points out, and images do matter. For taking us beyond the image, we can thank the author. For failing to take us deeper than he does, he might be dinged, but he argues for understanding the candidate as a symbol to the world and a potential occupier of the fragmented and narrow common ground of the nation, and that is a helpful gesture of analysis, and dare I say it without advocating any particular candidacy, hope (a term so degraded by its various appropriations as to beg replacement, but one which perhaps best characterizes what people do, in fact, want at this wretched stage). read.