Oh, man. _The New Yorker_ put up William Finnegan’s 2004 “article”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531fa_fact1?currentPage=all about Barack Obama, and boy, is it an interesting read on this day of all days. It’s a kind of Rosetta Stone of Obama studies, so many telltale indicators of a personage we can now recognize as a future president. (One quick example: at that time they called succumbing to his charisma to work tirelessly for him “drinking the Obama juice.”)
There are tons of delicious morsels in this short article I could pass on, but I’ll just leave you with my favorite. (I remember it from when I read it at the time, too.)

Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, _I_ don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”

That’s right, George. By now even you know that he’s your _successor_. He’s the fellow who disassembled that ornery coalition you and Karl Rove cobbled together. That’s who he is.
_Update_: Finnegan has “expanded”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2008/11/the-distance.html on the unmistakable subtext of the article, never enunciated explicitly, that Obama could someday be president. That claim seemed too bold to include in the pre–convention speech article, but reality has a way of confounding our opinions of what is and is not too bold.