Barack Obama had not been around long enough to rate being classified by Dana Milbank in last December’s Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government, his anthropological romp through “Potomac Land.” With tongue in cheek, the columnist categorized Washington’s political classes—the press, for example, is its “Greek chorus.” The President-elect’s only mention: “Obama surged in popularity and announced his presidential candidacy shortly after a photo appeared in People magazine of him in a bathing suit as part of a ‘Beach Babes’ spread also showing Catherine Zeta-Jones and Penelope Cruz.”

So how would the Post’s purveyor of political satire describe Obama now?

“He’s a shaman,” says Milbank, “believed to possess magical powers. No one knows the source of these powers, but it’s widely believed that on January 20, he will walk on water—across the Tidal Basin. He will perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes on the Ellipse.

“Anything less,” Milbank says, “will be a great disappointment to the nation.”

This article first appeared in the December 2008 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.