What Obama's America Will Look Like

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Would Obama have been able to pull this off if he were white? Seems unlikely. His literary prowess, preference for salads over steaks, and refined intelligence would have damned him as one of the dreaded liberal elite. Now that he’s the president he can appoint a cabinet of overcredentialed brainiacs from Harvard.

At the same time, Obama can say things to his African American supporters no white political leader ever could because he’s black like them. He listens to Jay-Z on his iPod, dances without biting his lower lip, and can sink a three-point basketball shot on the first try. His formidable wife is emphatically, unmistakably black. That makes it OK for him to declare to a black voter, “Brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on."

It’s in such personal exchanges with his base that the Obama cultural shift is likely to be most potent. They give a glimpse into the values that animate the private man. We’re now besotted with the images of the Obama family, those two enchanting little girls in their spic-and-span dresses, holding hands with their proud, statuesque mother and their father who—as he suddenly improvised on the night of his nomination victory—loves them “more than you will ever know.” Indeed, Michelle Obama may prove to be the most fully realized First Lady ever, a powerhouse in the public sphere but a role model at home. She seems to have resolved with Obamian grace the question of balance that is the torment of modern women: how to juggle work and family. Unlike Cherie Blair or Hillary Clinton she doesn’t strive to compete with her husband because she doesn’t have to. But unlike Nancy Reagan or Laura Bush she leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind that she can. She’s just chilling for a while until the kids find their feet. She seems to be telling a nation of frazzled women: You’re allowed to breathe!

Her East Wing will be alive with the vibrant conversation of people who want to make a difference. Sensible of the comparisons perhaps to Kennedys’ Camelot that famously promoted the arts at the White House, Obama told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press in December that he wants to highlight the diversity of American culture, inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poets to perform for his guests. “Historically,” he mused, “what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that sense that better days are ahead.”

The whole world prays that that sense will be proved true. It has a better chance now that Obama has broken the dark spell of the Bush years and pledged to return America to itself.

Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown. She has written for numerous publications, including The Times of London, The Spectator, and The Washington Post.

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