By Gene Lyons

The shrewdest thing Barack Obama ever said about his own leadership style was in his book “The Audacity of Hope.” “I serve as a blank screen,” Obama wrote, “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” Never mind that it’s a straight steal from Ralph Ellison’s classic 1952 novel “The Invisible Man.” If you’re going to borrow themes, borrow good ones.

The presidency, however, is very different from an existential novel. In context, Obama was talking about the same qualities Sen. Harry Reid cited in his clumsy “Negro dialect” remarks: Obama’s ability to be analytical about other people’s passions, and to offer the healing balm of his personality, particularly in racially tense situations.

Obama’s cool served him well during 2008 election cycle. In the wake of George W. Bush’s epic incompetence, “no-drama-Obama” became an almost irresistible choice. People saw in him what they wanted to see; the candidate happily obliged them. Andrew Sullivan, the conservative British-American pundit, described him as “a liberal Reagan who can reunite America.”

Some infatuated liberals saw him in near-messianic terms. To older voters, it was almost as if Obama’s candidacy offered a do-over of 1968, with the students, professors and hippies winning this time: no Nixon, no Kissinger, no “Southern strategy.” Just peace, prosperity and good vibes. “The One,” Oprah Winfrey called him.