"The Confidence and the Courage to Enjoy Life"

In addition to slagging Richard Roeper, the current issue of The Atlantic has this thoughtful analysis of Sen. Obama and the phenomenon of Obama-mania:

[A]nd seemingly from nowhere [he] gloriously appeared, fully formed.

All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke (a quality that made him simultaneously cool and warm) *** And, not least, the good-natured ease combined with a genius[.]

Moreover, he suddenly created a new hybrid, combining qualities that hadn’t before mixed[.] He was oddly unplaceable: *** appeared both American and quintessentially [other]; at once subtle and rollicking, he seemed *** to anticipate nothing less than “a new social type"[.]

[He] married an extraordinary, intelligent handsomeness with an attractiveness beyond the sexual -- one equally appealing to men and women[.]

“We smile when we see him; *** it makes us happy just to look at him.”

***

Moreover, with his sui generis accent *** his subtle phrasing, and the clean bite of his diction, he [spoke] with a precise sparkle never equaled.

***

In his blending of the urbane and the rambunctious, he found a way to be true to his own background, which he plainly adored, while reconciling that background to the vision of a suave man-about-town that he had aspired to as a working-class young man.

[His] “romantic elegance is wrapped around the resilient, tough core of a mutt, and Americans dream of thoroughbreds while identifying with mutts.”

***

[He] sparked "a delight so innocent and perfect that the attempt to analyse its sources seems an act of ingratitude," [but] such efforts to comprehend this ultimately ungraspable self-invention have nonetheless proved irresistible.

Oh wait... Did I say that was an analysis of Sen. Barack Obama?

Sorry about that.

Actually, those quotes all refer to Mr. Archie Leach, i.e. Cary Grant.

But you can understand my confusion.