A hopeful article, and true in the sense that Obama hasn't been lingering around DC long enough to be overly smirched by the close contact with big money. He of course has big doners to his campaign, but also hasn't been around long enough to be proven immune to it. It does look more promising though than a Clinton business-as-usual type presidency. It offers the definite refreshing scent of something different, and the country could sure use that.

Kevin Cassidy

San Francisco, CA

I fully agree with the premise of the article, but differ with the prescription. Barack Obama's electoral success is due to the approach to community organizating he learned in Chicago. It has been effectively applied to a grassroots movement that engaged hundreds and thousands of people in the political process.

The conclusion, however, that descending on Washington, DC, reflects the spirit of this movement and will effectively supplant the entrenched special interests in our nation's capital is not the appropriate inaugural celebration. Especially since so many people who contributed to the victory will not be able to participate.

Instead, and as I have already suggested to the Obama campaign, Barack Obama should ask every community to host its own inaugural celebration. And instead of indulging the old power-brokers in the capital, he can participate electronically across the nation. Such celebrations can stimulate local economies and provide a vehicle for continued community involvement by those who made his election possible.

The Washington economy will take a small hit, but the message will be a clear one. Power has been returned to the people.

Mark Wiznitzer

Arlington, VA

The assertion that Obama would govern from the bottom up is a very hopeful near-prayer. The history of liberal or progressive movements all over the world has, in reality, consistently been a picture of the leadership taking the helm and directing the efforts of the masses in channels selected by the illuminati. This article, and much of the recent public messianic deification of Obama, is reminiscent of the old mantra-chant: "Power To The People!" Who can forget that? If he were alive to answer the question of how governing from the bottom up would work, Jean-Jacques Rousseau would probably say, It wont work, because the "elect" must take charge.

Further, even though Saul Alinsky was near and dear to both Hoffman and Obama (and Hillary, as well!), I wonder if Alinsky could have accomplished what he did, using this neo-mystic hopefulness.

Carlton B. Cowan

North, Virginia

Will Obama confirm or deny the remarks on Iraq that were made to the British press by Samantha Powers?

Derry Ledoux

Cohasset, MA

Check in with opensecrets.org, to see a list of Obama's top donors. Goldman Sachs tops the list, followed by an agricultural conglomerate. The idea that he'd enter the White House unbeholden to corporate interests is naïve.

As to the movement Obama's supposedly created, it's a movement of Obama-worshippers. Has he inspired his base to flock to antiwar rallies or do anything else substantive? Obama hit the national scene after his Democratic Convention speech in 2004. He was selected by the party leadership because they were confident that he'd espouse their centrist politics, and he's done so.

There's absolutely no evidence based on his limited political record that he wouldn't have joined Clinton and Edwards in voting for the war had he been a senator with presidential aspirations when the vote came up. At the time he made his speech, he was a state senator representing one of the most progressive constituencies in the country. It's unlikely he would have stuck his neck out as a senator, since there's not a single instance of his ever threatening his presidential ambitions.

Obama will be a fine President, but he'll be a centrist business-as-usual President.

Laura Kelber

Brooklyn, NY

Mr. von Hoffman hits the nail on the head. Many people understand the potential of the Obama campaign, and the promise it brings for dramatic changes in the way politics works in America. And it is this promise, not the speeches, that mobilize all Obama supporters.

Janet Kubancik

Cleveland Heights, OH