There is something profoundly surreal about having known someone like Barack Obama, whose political career has seen a meteoric rise that is the stuff of political fairytales. To turn on the television and see a once-familiar face grown slightly more mature, hear the same vocal intonations and note many of same personal characteristics - now all presented as elements of a "rock star" persona - is a strange experience.

Of course, with public acclaim of the kind Obama now enjoys comes a host of hangers-on, many eager to claim some "special relationship" with a famous person. Certainly, Barack and I were hardly best friends; he was a year ahead of me at Harvard Law School (and six years older) when we met the summer that I became a newly-minted editor of the Harvard Law Review. But we did work together for some time, and he reached out to advise me when I became the first female Managing Editor in the Review's history.

Carol Platt Liebau

Read the entire thing, it is a dynamite article, and a good explanation of why Obama is doing so well...

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