How did a black junior senator from Illinois become the golden boy of American politics? With a little help from Hollywood

This article originally ran in the March 2007 issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here

Conventional wisdom holds that Americans simply won't elect a black man president, even if he's "rock star" Barack Obama. We're just not ready, goes the party line. Our racism is too deeply rooted. Maybe so, but we sure do fantasize about it a lot.

Back in 1995, General Colin Powell was the Great Black Hope, basking in the fuzzy glow of media adulation and pondering a bid for that big leather swivel chair. Like the current outbreak of "Obama-rama," what was known as "Powellmania" had the overwrought hormonal quality of a summer fling.

"Can Colin Powell Save America?" wondered Newsweek dreamily. Time mooned over "the Persian Gulf war hero who exudes strength, common sense, and human values like no one else on the scene."

We all know how that turned out. Powell bailed on a presidential run with the prim self-denial of an ROTC lieutenant passing on a joint. Eight years later, as secretary of state, he delivered his UN speech making the case for war in Iraq—demonstrating a lot less strength, common sense, or human values than Time might have hoped.

But America wasn't down with a dream deferred. We just kept pining.

Fortunately, Hollywood—which has been electing black presidents since James Earl Jones took the oath in 1972's The Man—was on the case. Less than two months after Powell's UN speech, Chris Rock's Head of State arrived in theaters (having bumped off Chris Tucker's Mr. President). Forget the nasty reviews. The film hit on a key aspect of the black president fantasy that's now paying dividends for the Illinois senator: the notion that blacks have an innate authenticity whites lack, and that they can therefore speak unvarnished truths that whites are too repressed to utter. In the movie, Rock plays Mays Gilliam, a Washington, D.C., councilman picked to replace his party's nominee after a fatal accident. His selection is a bid to burnish the party's image; nobody really expects him to win—least of all Gilliam—so he embarks on a brazenly candid campaign and teaches his rich, white donors how to do the Electric Slide.

Along the same lines, anyone planning a black POTUS movie marathon—Hillary, take note—might also include Eddie Murphy's 1992 comedy The Distinguished Gentleman (technically he's a congressman, but same idea) and Warren Beatty's 1998 Bulworth (technically he's white, but again, same idea). Another must: Dave Chappelle's gangsta president, "Black Bush," who, when asked about his rationale for toppling Saddam, howls in a congressional hearing, "That nigga tried to kill my father!"