Obama's realness factor

This week, Barack Obama gave a very impressive answer to a question by a member of the audience about character-building experience.  What a loaded question.  The Illinois Senator knocked it out of the park:

"What would you say is the most painful and character-buildingexperience of your life that puts you in an important position to makeimportant decisions of life and death and the well-being of ourcountry?"

After a brief pause, Obama talked about his childhood:

"I would say the fact that I grew up without a father in the home.What that meant was, I had to learn very early on to figure out whatwas important and what wasn't and exercise my own judgment, in someways to raise myself. I mean, my mother was wonderful, and was afoundation of love for me.

'But as a young man growing up, I didn't have a lot of role models,and I made a lot of mistakes. But I learned to figure out that therewere certain values that were important to me, that I had to be trueto. Nobody was going to force me to be honest. Nobody was going toforce me to work hard. Nobody was going to force me to have drive andambition.

"Nobody was going to force me to have empathy for other people. Butif I really thought those values were important, then I had to livethem out...That's why it's so important for me now, both as a UnitedStates senator, as presidential candidate, but also as a father and ahusband to wake up every morning and ask myself am I living up to thosevalues that I say I think are important. Because if I'm not, Ishouldn't be president."

Could you ever imagine Hillary Clinton giving an answer like that?  I could at least imagine one of her famous chuckles.