While the NYT seemed kind of clueless on the McCain negative ad story, they did do a very good job delving back into Barack Obama’s years as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. During a stretch where he ran for and eventually became a state senator, the piece includes insights from students, coworkers, and law professors. Not all comments are highly positive, but there’s very little there that could be called bad. But it is impossible to read the article and not come away with the clear impression that Obama is highly intelligent, fair-minded, deeply thoughtful, and very conversant on critical legal and political issues. This is no 790th-of-795 John McCain, nor the mental pygmy who currently occupies the White House.

Of course, that may be a turn-off to many Americans who seem comfortable with a president who is as dumb and as ordinary as we are. But with luck, enough Americans are tired enough of having a demented chimpanzee in the White House that they’d be willing to risk having someone highly intelligent in there instead.

The NYT story includes links to reproductions of Obama’s 1994 syllabus for the course “Current Issues in Racism and the Law,” final exams from 1996 to 2003, and commentary on the materials and the article by several legal experts.