All the signs were there

Never mind the meetings with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the really significant things about Barack Obama are as follows: the embarrassing attempts at 10-pin bowling; the enthusiasm for technology and his large collection of Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

It's the comics that are conclusive.* The White House has been occupied by, among others, cowboys, crooks, actors, attorneys, academics, soldiers, slave-owners, sportsmen, businessmen and a true bad-ass or two. But, come January, Barack Obama will be the first nerd to occupy the Oval Office.

*PS: In that link Tony Norman refers to Obama's belief that Moby Dick is the greatest of American novels. Not that it matters, but I'd have said the Great Gatsby; at the very least one would hope that a book about the intoxication of money, the pursuit of impossible dreams and the shady side of the American dream – its people who "smashed up things and creatures and then they retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" – would have a particular resonance.