We live in a cynical world. And we want to be inspired.

Those themes, the crux of the movie "Jerry Maguire," might well explain Barack Obama's historic victory in the Iowa presidential caucuses last week.

Obama, more than any other candidate, appears to understand voter weariness with politicians who behave like so many voracious sharks circling in the Potomac River, shouting, "Show me the money!" Obama, much like Tom Cruise's idealistic sports agent, is attempting to transform an entrenched, greed-driven culture.

The cynics -- the politicos, the pundits, the so-called experts -- voiced skepticism at the audacity of Obama's hopefulness. They called him a babe in the thorny woods of national politics. Now, I'm not so sure.

The electorate clearly craves someone willing to wear his idealism on his sleeve. Someone who taps into the spirit of Bobby Kennedy and asks, "Why not?"

Before Thursday, I thought Obama was at best quixotic, at worst, a Pollyanna.

But most great success stories play out amid rampant skepticism. And the Iowa outcome suggests Obama is on to something.

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, pulled off this victory in one of the whitest states in the nation, with a black population of 2 percent. Whether his message and manner obscure or transcend his race is becoming beside the point.

"You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington," Obama said in his victory speech. "To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition."

He spoke of choosing hope over fear, unity over division, and of taking government back from lobbyists.

"Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope."

Bill Clinton came from an Arkansas hamlet called Hope. But Obama -- in his narrative and his message -- embodies it in a way that the polarizing and calculating Clinton never did. And the performance of the current president and Congress have left the electorate contemptuous of government's capacity to lead ethically or effectively.

In an election shaping up as a choice between idealism and cynicism, Obama may be a man whose time has come.

To call Obama potentially the first black president oversimplifies his ethnic background and shows faint understanding of the nation we live in today.

Obama was born in Hawaii, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from small-town Kansas. He has lived in his native Hawaii, as well as Indonesia and New York. He's a street-level organizer with a Harvard law degree.

Last semester, teaching Virginia Commonwealth University students who could trace their roots to Ghana, Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines, I saw the future -- and it looked a lot like Obama. He's the personification of America's increasingly complex diversity.

But more important than his pigment is his message of hope at a time when voters feel alienated by the political process.

"I just want to be inspired," said the heroine in "Jerry Maguire." But for Obama or any other candidate, that will not be enough. We need to be transformed.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.