Who is Barack Obama?

Howard Fineman • E-mail

NEW YORK - Who is Barack Obama?

We are about to learn the answer to that question.

Now we’ll see what he really is made of, what he believes deep down, and who he really is as a person.

From now until Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary on April 22, the country is in the midst of an unprecedented, wide open space in this ongoing political season. And his every move is, and will be, the story.

We all know Hillary Clinton — maybe too well.

We know who she is and what she offers.

She was a first lady for eight years, and carries with her all the scars and prior baggage.

Obama, by contrast, was the shiny newcomer who magically appeared on the scene in 2004. He was fresh, and without battle wounds.

But he got nicked badly Tuesday in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.

Now he’s back in the fight.

He is ahead on points, and will likely win the bout and the championship if he has the guts, the fortitude and the sense of purpose to fully confront Clinton during these final rounds.

Obama is known for making a stellar first impression.

He learned the skill back when he was child; back when he was forced to make a series of introductions in faraway places.

His mother carted him from Hawaii to Indonesia and back again.

He was plopped down in a white prep school and then sent off for two years of college in Los Angeles before heading east to Columbia University in New York. Then it was Harvard Law. He finally settled down on the South Side of Chicago.

But he was still an outsider, living in a place that, as the saying goes “don’t want no guy no guy sent.”

Pretty much everyone liked or admired Obama. Only his impatient ambition irritated others, mostly those with less talent than he possessed.

But along this timeline, has Obama really ever been “up against it?”

True, he was the mixed-race child of divorce and didn’t know his father. And it’s hard to imagine a tougher emotional childhood than that.

And yet, from the time his grandparents sent him to prep school, it’s all been a pretty smooth ride.

His idea of tough choices and painful sacrifice, evidently, includes his decision to turn down a lucrative corporate law job to advocate for the poor folk of Chicago.

That is worthy, to be sure, but bragging about it can sound a little precious.

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