"Once upon a time, an audacious black man named Barack Obama decided to run for president of the United States. But a former president, a white man named Bill, wanted former first lady Hillary to have the job.

Or maybe not, because Bill began saying things that hurt his wife's chances.

"Give me a break," cried Bill, frustrated by the spell that Barack had cast over the campaign. "The whole thing is a fairy tale."

When black voters got wind of Bill's incantations, they became angry. They thought Bill was trying to make Barack's quest into a black magic fable. So they put a hex on Hillary's campaign and made Barack their favorite son.

Not long afterward, a photograph mysteriously appeared on the Drudge Report's Web site that could have come straight from a fable in "The Arabian Nights." It was Barack, on a trip to Africa in 2006, and he was wearing a traditional turban and robe, as visiting dignitaries sometimes do.

But the photograph was cursed. Was someone trying to conjure Barack as a naive Ali Baba? Or worse, as one of Osama's 40 thieves?

Bill's chagrin notwithstanding, the campaign was turning into one fantastic tale. Especially for a certain black scribe who grew up during the reign of Jim Crow.

Did Barack really have a chance? The scribe began a quest for enlightenment. And he came upon a visionary great-grandson of slaves who had peered across the racial landscape and had become Virginia's first black governor.

"There's a white guy who does work on my house in the country," L. Douglas Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, told the scribe. "Rides a motorcycle, wears a leather jacket, lives deep in Republican Country. He's an Army Ranger and his dad is a retired colonel. And he's sick of this war. So he says to me, 'Doug, I'm voting for Obama. Obama has stirred something in me.' To the extent that I am alive to see this, I am thoroughly amazed."

The scribe journeyed on to QuBall1 Billiards in Capitol Heights, where he was sure to find savvy sharks who knew all the angles.

"I believe Obama can win because America needs fresh eyes," said Khalid Shakur, 34, the pool hall manager. "He doesn't browbeat the white man with the racial issue, but he hits on universal themes in a way that lets blacks and whites know that a better U.S. will be better for all of us."

Added William "J.R." Morton, 74, a retired postal worker and shark of great renown: "Sure he can win, if it's a fair election, if it's on the up and up. But that's a big if."

The scribe shared his newfound insights with a wise man who thought deep thoughts in an Ivory Tower.

"I'd say a lot of white people are tired of living passively in a dirty, corrupt and racist regime, and they feel that a vote for Obama would be like taking a bath," said Roger Wilkins, a professor of American history and culture at George Mason University.

Not so long ago, in the scribe's far-out home state of Louisiana, David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, ran for Congress in a special election. It was 1999, and he took one of every five votes in that south Louisiana district, finishing a close third in a crowded field. He narrowly missed the runoff.

Then, just this month, Barack swept the state's Democratic presidential primary, with roughly three in 10 white men voting for him. Less than a decade separated those two elections. It seems miraculous.

But the scribe remained skeptical. For if white people had changed, as Barack's popularity seemed to indicate, then Bill's effort to cast him as an illusion was a reminder that -- Presto! -- perhaps they could also change back.

Even Hillary had taken to casting mocking spells.

"Now, I could stand up here and say: 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified,' " she told supporters in Rhode Island. "The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

Despite the ridicule, Barack continued to levitate in the polls, as if that photograph of him had conjured the genie in Aladdin's lamp. And Hillary seemed to have pricked her finger on her campaign's spinning wheel." (Courtland Milloy, The Washington Post, February 27, 2008)