Gary Hart reviews Barack Obama's book.

Here's his hopeful audacity:

Truly great leaders possess a strategic sense, an inherent understanding of how the framework of their thinking and the tides of the times fit together and how their nation’s powers should be applied to achieve its large purposes. “The Audacity of Hope” is missing that strategic sense. Perhaps the senator should address this in his next book. By doing so, he would most certainly propel himself into the country’s small pantheon of leaders in a way that personal narrative and sudden fame cannot.

In a very short time, Barack Obama has made himself into a figure of national interest, curiosity and some undefined hope. This book fully encourages those sentiments. His greatest test will be that of sensing the times, of matching his timing with the tides of the nation.

Hart is being rather abstract there. What does that really mean? He evokes the proverb "Time and tide wait for no man"... whatever that means. Hmmm:

The processes of nature continue, no matter how much we might like them to stop. The word tide meant “time” when this proverb was created, so it may have been the alliteration of the words that first appealed to people. Now the word tide in this proverb is usually thought of in terms of the sea, which certainly does not wait for anyone.

Does a nation have processes like nature's? And what would it mean for Obama to match his timing with the tides of the nation? Is it something like this phenomenon? Mysterious synchrony!