We kept waiting for the audacity.

Listening to Sen. Barack Obama’s soothing baritone reading “The Audacity of Hope” proved too hypnotizing for my family (especially my husband, the driver) to get past an interminable Chapter 2 during a Christmas road trip from Fort Worth to St. Louis.

The good senator from Illinois sounded pleasant enough, a reasonable man with admirable ideas. But where was the oomph? The risk-taking? The daring proposals that would justify the “audacity” in the title? It seemed a sad commentary on contemporary politics that offering hope qualified as bold and courageous.

I finally finished reading Obama’s second book as his presidential campaign was racking up a series of primary and caucus wins. Then I read his engaging 1995 memoir “Dreams From My Father” as Obama yard signs started sprouting around Texas.

And for maybe the second time since I started voting, I started believing that there’s a realistic chance of finding a nominee on the ballot who’s more appealing than a write-in candidate.

It’s refreshing and encouraging to watch Obama energize Americans hungry for leadership and engage voters who for too long believed they couldn’t make a difference. He sounds like a man who understands that finding common ground doesn’t inherently require abandoning principle – for whom compromise can signify progress, not necessarily cowardly retreat.

His chant of change connects with people who are fed up with Washington’s inability – or unwillingness – to tackle real problems that affect real people in their daily lives.

Sure, there are sincere, hard-working members of Congress and competent bureaucrats doing the legwork of government. Our system couldn’t survive without them. But what gets the most attention isn’t the collaboration, say, of Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republican John Cornyn on open records, or Obama and Tom Coburn on requiring competitive bidding for hurricane reconstruction contracts.

Instead, what gets more traction are the accusations of obstructionism and activism, the point-scoring and score-settling, the lock-stepping and disingenuous posturing.

Instead of straightforward debate on divisive issues, we get gotcha:

Coburn and Sen. John McCain try to tack a last-minute amendment onto a bipartisan public lands bill in order to overturn a Reagan-era law barring loaded guns from national parks. All the better to embarrass the Democratic senators running for president, you see.

Instead of agreement that lying and cheating and illegal drug use are wrong, we get nyah-nyahing: House Democrats call out pitcher Roger Clemens for saying he didn’t use performance enhancers, and Republicans call former trainer Brian McNamee a liar for telling federal investigators that Clemens did.

And what truth did that give the American public for its money?

A new president can’t cure what ails Congress. He can’t immediately heal rifts exacerbated by two terms of administration arrogance and miscalculation.

What’s attractive about Obama is his capacity to listen to those who disagree with him, to seek middle ground if there is any, to acknowledge that no political perspective or ideology has all the answers.

I worry about his lack of national governing experience – but am comforted by what he seems to have learned from his failures (and successes) as a community organizer and state legislator.

I worry about the weight of expectation and the revisionist baggage of comparisons to John F. Kennedy. Don’t get me wrong. JFK inspired many with his challenges to our ingenuity, drive and better selves. But we shouldn’t forget that hatred of him wasn’t confined to a lone gunman over a grassy knoll one horrible day in Dallas.

And there’s no way to know whether Kennedy would have been able to reverse early missteps in Southeast Asia to avoid the Vietnam disaster, or whether his personal flaws would have prevented him from seeing through civil rights initiatives that Lyndon B. Johnson pushed into law.

Obama represents hope. He represents possibility. But he also represents more than a leap of faith. I’ve come to believe that he understands that inspiring rhetoric isn’t solutions, that the exhilaration of the campaign is a fleeting rush and that Inauguration Day means the hard work has only begun.

Linda P. Campbell is a columnist and editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. E-mail her at [email protected].