Barack Obama Sr.

I tend to think that the media spends too much time analyzing biography as a proxy for the candidate's real ideas (such as they may be), and in Obama's case, I naturally would be even less interested in a man he hardly knew. But The Globe this morning has a fascinating story about a brilliant, complex man who resembles his son in some ways, but is the opposite in other, crucial ways.

Never one to hold back his opinion, Obama Sr. was well known at the time of Mboya's death as a voluble critic of then president Jomo Kenyatta. Already out of favor, in the years immediately after Mboya's death he was removed from the government job that he so loved, and stripped of his passport. Once one of Kenya's most promising young professionals, he did not handle political exile well. He was involved in a series of car crashes, many of them involving alcohol, and one of which ultimately took his life.

Obama's decline was rapid. But what, to many, makes his a tragic tale is the height from which he fell, and the veil of mystery that still clouds his unraveling. Although an avid talker, he was a man of many secrets. In the early years of his life he bristled with promise. Like his son, he linked his future to that of his country.

Barack Obama, was going to "shape the destiny of Africa," he often declared, jabbing his ubiquitous pipe in the air for emphasis. And many thought he might be right. In those years, Obama made anything seem possible, so infectious was his enthusiasm. If Barack Obama, once a village goat herder, could go to Harvard University for a graduate degree, mind you, and then go on to help shape the economy of a nation, anything was possible.

"He was a self-involved, egotistical, vivid person," recalled US Representative Neil Abercrombie, Democrat of Hawaii, who attended the University of Hawaii with Obama Sr. "But in his core he was dedicated to Africa, to freedom and justice. It seemed like it was about him, but in the end it was not. It was really all about hope."