To my left as I write, is the photograph of Barack and Michelle Obama on the front page of Thursday's New Zealand Herald taken, presumably, as they walked for the crowds along Pennsylvania Ave on their way to the White House after the inauguration.

I cannot stop looking at it. They are both laughing, both supremely happy. Their gloved hands are entwined and Michelle is leaning into him, clasping his arm. They radiate charisma and power, beauty and joy. They are the Kennedys again.

Interesting, isn't it, when we look back, that it was Ted Kennedy, of all the senior Washington machine politicians who saw the potential in Obama first and came out and declared Obama the man for his time.

Most of the world is in love with Barack Obama at the moment and even in the many places where people hate the United States, there must be a new expectancy. He is intensely charismatic. He is young, he is tall, he is movie star handsome, he has wonderful teeth and a smile to calm the world and bring it hope.

Hope, I guess, is what Barack Obama is about. Hope is what the world wants from him. He is deeply cool. When he is not smiling, his face is serious, considered and grave, yet he seems unfazed by the burdens he has assumed. We have seen during the campaign he does not rattle in the face of severe provocation. He ignores it and rides above it. There is nerve there, and steel.

One commentator said of his inauguration speech that it was stern. Yes, stern about the true values, the good values, not only the values of decent humanity but stern about the old values of the United States itself. He may just be absolutely the right man for the age.

His speech, after the Oath of Office, was, as we have come to expect, masterful.

It was not as simple or as surely delivered as the one he gave in Chicago the night he claimed the Presidency, where Jesse Jackson wept in the crowd and when all round the world we hushed and listened and watched with wonder and pride, but you cannot blame a fellow for being a little nervous in front of two million faces stretched as far as the Washington Monument.

It was beautifully written, nevertheless. Read this and fail to be moved: "As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.