Daring or disastrous?

My mother almost ruined a 30-year friendship over politics. At first, her sudden burst of political passion didnt make sense. But that's when I remembered her chasing me around the living room with a green plastic hair brush.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. Here in Charlotte, I give thanks each November for being able to open up my sunroof, wear a Windbreaker instead of a parka. This season, I have another thing to be thankful for: an incredible political season, one where new voters found connection with their American right to vote.

Now, some commentators, most notably Tina Brown of The Daily Beast, seem to believe we've elected a magical Negro Spirit Guide as president. "This has been an election full of magic. White Magic that only the black man from everywhere and nowhere could perform," Brown declared after Obama's win. President-elect Barack Obama's biracial birth, fatherless childhood outside the contiguous United States and meteoric rise is indeed the stuff of mythology.

But there is something dizzying about the heights of Obama's other-worldly pedestal. And—if he continues to follow another narrative arc laid out in popular culture—the depths to which he will inevitably fall. Will this character rescue the world in the end? Or will he become consumed by an unseen, dark inner soul?