I fell in love with Barack Obama during his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and even more in love after I watched this speech.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=tydfsfSQiYc[/youtube]

He’s been my favored candidate for president ever since he announced, I’ve given him a little money, and I’ve expressed my enthusiasm for him in various ways. I knew about his general biography and could mark his spot on the political spectrum, but I couldn’t honestly say that I knew exactly what sorts of specific policies he would pursue, or what kind of leader he was likely to be, if elected president until I read The Audacity of Hope.

Suffice it to say that I like what I read.

I don’t share all of Obama’s beliefs and values — I’ve given up on trying to find candidates who match my beliefs and values perfectly — but we’re pretty close in this regard, and after reading this book I have a deep respect for how Obama developed them. For instance, I don’t share his religious faith, but I get it. I understand why he’s made the choices he has made, and I deeply respect the mature and intellectual way that he decided to become a practicing Christian. (It had nothing to do with political calculations, by the way.) I also appreciate the fact that he remains skeptical and doubtful about his faith, in addition to everything else in his belief system. We could use somebody in the White House who’s a little less certain that he’s carrying out god’s will.

Obama’s politics come across as deeply rooted in a particular value system, but remarkably non-ideological. I can only paraphrase the distinction he draws, because I don’t have the book in front of me, but it boils down to using a value system to help him assess the facts that present themselves in the real world — and perhaps adjusting the value system to the facts, instead of the other way around — and not using an ideology to filter out the inconvenient facts and concentrate on the ones that buttress the ideology. I’d like to have a president like that.

Best of all, the guy is a fantastic writer, even if he sometimes uses twelve words when three will do and his prose, like some of his politics, sometimes edges toward the purple. (Call me naive, but I believe he wrote every word in this book.) Can you imagine what it would be like to have a president who can not only read, but write, books? Keep hope alive!

I signed an online endorsement that compares Obama to JFK. But I think that misses the mark. I honestly believe that if elected, Obama would think more like Lincoln and govern more like FDR. That’s high praise, since those two are in my judgment far and away the greatest presidents in US history, and I don’t say that lightly.

I hope Obama wins in Iowa tonight, then wins the nomination and the general election. But I’d also like to see him as a Supreme Court justice or the Senate majority leader. So if he loses, I’ll live and I’ll expect bigger and better things from him in the future. But I sure hope he wins.