No Wusses In Chicago

Vanity Fair Examines the Career of Barack Obama:

The Barack Obama who wrote so poignantly of adolescent alienation and the search for racial identity is the same Barack Obama who learned, the hard way, how to deal with the likes of Emil Jones Jr., a man whose cell-phone ring tone is the theme from The Godfather. Obama’s good looks and soft-spoken willingness to ponder aloud some of the inanities of modern politics have masked the hard inner core and unyielding ambition that have long burned beneath the surface shimmer. He is not, and never has been, soft. He’s not laid-back. He’s not an accidental man. His friends and family may be surprised by the rapidity of his rise, but they’re not surprised by the fact of it.