Barack Obama is turning us all into arm-chair analysts. What is it about him anyway? How is it possible for a man to run for president (and run and run) and never have anything anyone ever throws at him stick. Surely there is a explanation for Obama's teflon-like existence. Jack Shafer's latest take is that he is slick "to the core." Is this also what makes him unfunny? Better yet, how did Obama manage this slickness without turning into Mitt Romney?

Actually, Shafer doesn't come up with many answers either beyond the fact that Obama seems to have a knack for taking difficult situations and using them to his advantage, also known as, not running scared. There's also the matter of his preempting what might have eventually developed into damaging stories by publishing them in his memoir Dreams of My Father (Obama was perhaps an early adapter to the benefits of over-sharing). That said, maybe there is no answer. Maybe over the course of the next one hundred days the press will come full circle and decide Obama just is. At which point he'll become our next President and nothing destroys a good teflon coating like winning an election.