EARLIER this year, just after his victory in the Iowa caucuses but before the punishing and seemingly endless forced march that was primary season began, few people beyond his Illinois constituents recognised Barack Obama's name let alone the young Sentaor's unrivalled potential.

Those who were aware the Illinois Senator was among the pack of long-shots contesting for the Democratic Presidential nomination knew just one thing about him. And they knew it for certain. He was an also-ran before the first primary ballots were even cast. The results of the Iowa poll were a minor statistical anomaly that would not alter the Saturn V-like upward trajectory of Senator Hillary Clinton.

Similar things had happened there before. A non-starter called Tom Harkin won almost 80 percent of the vote in the Iowa Democratic straw poll in 1992, with eventual nominee Bill Clinton coming in a very poor third with just three percent. Within weeks Harkin had vanished back into obscurity and Governor Clinton was on his way to the White House.

Let Obama savour his brief moment in the sun. After the first-in-the nation New Hampshire primary, his candidacy would be a footnote in the history books written about the 2008 Presidential election. Hillary Clinton already had the primary contest, and the Democratic nomination, wrapped up: the Clinton political machine, operating in all 50 states and routinely maintained and oiled by the former President and the Senator from New York, was invincible. If the hoary Democratic Party insiders gave Obama any thought whatsoever, it was to dismiss him. He was too young. Too inexperienced. Too ethnic (read black). Too Not One of Us.

There was an air of what the pundits called "inevitability" about the Clinton nomination. The boosters in her campaign and the punditocracy in the media said she had "earned" the nomination - as if remaining married to the impeached and incorrigible Perjurerer-In-Chief earned her anything but the right to our sympathies (and even those weren't instantly forthcoming given the couple's resemblance to the Dogpatch answer to the Macbeths, all counterfeit Southern charm and overweening ambition).

Her shortcomings notwithstanding, it was decreed from On High that the primaries would be a pro forma affair, a one-horse race with all of the smart money going on the filly. The other contestants - including seasoned and attractive public figures as John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden - would essentially be fighting it out for second place and possible consideration for the Vice-Presidential slot on the Democratic ticket.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Denver nominating convention of the Democratic Party. The American electorate, for the first time since the tragically abbreviated Presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968, rediscovered that nothing is inevitable in politics except that which they actually vote for.

The Clintons, the party professionals, the talking heads on TV, the new breed of power brokers who have assumed the role of the old men in smoked-filled rooms who once imposed their choices of Presidential candidates on America's parties, proved powerless before the Politics of Hope as embodied in Barack Obama.

The dark horse in the race for the Democratic nomination became the front runner, propelled by the type of high-octane optimism missing from the American political scene ever since Sirhan Sirhan barged his way into a Los Angeles hotel kitchen and killed the last American Dreamer and his inclusive, uplifting dream.

Within a matter of weeks, all of the old political certainties were being swept away. In a series of fast-finish blitzkriegs across the United States, Obama began to rack up victory after primary victory. Yes we can? Yes he certainly could. The old order began to changeth without even realising what was going on around it. The outlines of a triumph of hope over constantly re-inforced, consistently depressing experience began to take shape.

One who did recognise Obama's potential much earlier than most was the writer Michael Chabon. He had an unfair advantage over the rest of us: his wife, novelist Ayelet Waldman, was a classmate and friend of Obama's at Harvard. She had introduced her husband to this remarkable and remarkably appealing figure years before. And Chabon became a very early convert to the cause of an Obama Presidency.

After Iowa, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist took to his keyboard and distilled the underlying appeal of Barack Obama into a short essay. Essentially he re-posed a question originally asked by George Bernard Shaw, one Robert F. Kennedy repeatedly asked himself on the campaign trail during the 1968 election: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream things that never were and say 'Why not'?"

Chabon released what was less a traditional political endorsement than a love song to the human spirit - to the art of the possible - in the days before the New Hampshire primary.

He pointed out the future cannot ever belong to those who are resigned to today's tried-and-failed approaches to politics. He argued those who are apathetic toward bold new solutions being offered to old, seemingly intractable problems are destined to live out their days in a Past Tense environment. By rejecting change in favour of the soiled status quo, they condemn themselves to being governed by soulless politicians who have no core convictions other than a lust for personal power, those who have the style, authenticity and integrity of rabid wolverines.

Only, argued the author, by embracing those like Obama who combine vision, reason and moral courage, those who are genuinely commited to furthering the underlying ideals and principles of American society, will progress be made.

The only thing standing between Barack Obama and the Oval Office, said Chabon, was fear. And not just the fear generated by the professional fear-mongers. Remember, this was before before Bill Clinton's injudicious attempts to paint Obama as the Favourite Son candidate of African-Americans with no message or appeal resonating beyond that constituency. Before Rev. Wright was packaged and sold to the American electorate as a cross between Rasputin and Dr. Martin Luther King's evil twin. Before Obama was an elitist. And it was well before he secured the Democratic nomination and had to contend with the delusional accusations manufactured by the Republican Fear Machine. The attacks that smeared him as a Marxist. And a secret Islamist. And a boon companion of domestic terrorists.

No, Chabon correctly identified the fact that the most potent fear which could cripple an Obama candidacy would not in fact spring from members of what he termed the professional phobocracy, Rather, Chabon argued, it was our own fear of rejecting Politics As Usual, of breaking a decades-long Co-Dependency on the Politics of Cynicism, that would hobble his candidacy,

We had to overcome our reluctant reliance on obsolete dogmas, outworn slogans and outdated political religions. We had to overcome the fear that paralyses people from moving beyond the familiar and exploring new territory. Overcome this fear of possible failure, of disappointment, of heartache, argued Chabon, and you overcome all of the old orthodoxies. And all of the arguments against an Obama Presidency. Chabon sketched the roadmap to Obama's victory before many thought such a victory possible. Read his words now in light of all that has happened since Iowa. Read how hope could (and indeed did) become a revolutionary act in 2008. - Tim Hodgson