Obama campaigned on hope in 2008 and it helped turn out a large and diverse electorate, excited at the idea that this charming man who could be the hero of a feel-good movie would give us our happy ending. He spent the next years cultivating that image….. through it all, he radiated hope and racked up some impressive victories - passing universal health care legislation, killing Osama bin Laden, getting the federal bureaucracy largely working as it should again - that justified his heroic image.