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      Passing through Spartanburg (S.C.), I stopped at a laundromat on the east side of town.  There were four people there, and curiously enough, all four of us were youngish men, doing the laundry on a weekday afternoon.  The other three men were all black.  We started talking, but I literally could not understand the accent of the man who did most of the talking, so I faded out of the conversation.  But later when two of the others had left, I mentioned to the one other man that I was on a trip down south, and I had passed through D.C. on my way down from the north and had been to the inauguration.  To say that he was curious was an understatement.  He wanted to hear all about it, and when I had given him a sense of the event the conversation came to a little pause.  He then asked me, “What do you think of Obama?”  It was clear that he wanted the “white person’s” opinion on the man.  We both had a lot to say about how impressed we were.  He was most impressed by his non-retaliatory style.  As we spoke of all the good things that were happening around us, he voiced the (often cited) fear that Obama would be killed.  He felt it very powerfully.

      All this love so many people are pouring out for this man, could turn to hatred very quickly if he were killed.  And it is worrisome, because all this light will cast a shadow at some point.

      But as we discussed this possibility both of us had watery eyes.  I will reiterate that the emotional effect Obama is having on this country is astonishing.

      And what amazed me was how very curious we both were, like a teenage boy and girl curious about each other. 

      Reading over some of Peggy Noonan’s pieces from the past several years on Barack Obama, I felt that I was seeing an old political operative finally seeing that there can be something real in politics.  When you look at a year or more’s worth of pieces from her, you see her coming to an appreciation of the young democrat slowly but surely.

      I remember Ms. Noonan visiting my high school and speaking there; I was amazed that she could have been a presidential speechwriter, because she seemed like such a lightweight blowhard (I guess that says more about the youthful me than about her).  And I felt that way for years, seeing her columns from time to time.  But something has changed in her.  The combination of obvious Republican fecklessness and incompetence and the emergence of Obama have brought a new kind of maturity to her writing.  What she seems to realize now is that intelligent people do not have to be the servants of their less intelligent superiors.  The cabinet members of your average politician – and certainly of your average president – are usually far more intelligent than the men who tell them what to do.  Obama is probably the first president that she felt she had something to learn from.  That can change a commentator, can’t it?  It’s the difference between experiencing the leadership of another as opposed to merely your own inferior place in a hierarchy.

      Last night I was at the home of an elderly Italian gentleman and found, to my surprise, one of the inaugural balls on television (did they do this in the past?).  There was Beyonce, Sting, Mariah Carey and the like with Barack and Michelle and friends dancing in a little special stage for them.  It didn’t look very Viennese or ball-like, to be quite honest; it was a bit shocking for me to see the President dancing to the kind of music that might have been played at my sister’s wedding.  And of course, I was very curious to hear what this Italian gentleman, in his 80s – who every day wears a pressed button-down shirt and pleated pants, and on cooler days a cashmere sweater, and who even though it’s not that easy on his knees will always rise to greet someone and will always escort you to the door – thought about seeing a black president dancing onstage to music by Mariah Carey.

      He turned and said to me, “It’s so good to see a young man in the presidency.”