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By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Saturday, May 16, 2009, at 7:11 AM ET

Barack Obama began his presidency with an unusual attribute: that the country already understood him, or thought it did, from his books. The story he told in Dreams From My Father and reinforced in The Audacity of Hope was about a man of multiple worlds who struggles to come to terms with his father's abandonment and a confounding racial identity. Obama resolves his rootlessness and anger by committing himself socially, religiously, and, eventually, politically. He depicts his mature self as unusually grounded, able to see other points of view and to bridge chasms.

The protagonist of these books is a persuasive and appealing character--so much so that he left little demand for alternative explanations. As time goes by, though, Obama's Obama feels less and less satisfying. It's not that the author's projection of himself is distorted in any obvious way, but rather that it leaves too much unexplained--his ambition, his aloofness, his fundamental beliefs, if any. It's too soon to offer an interpretation of our president. But after four months in office, we can see some emerging themes.

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Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy.

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