Could Obama be the Tiger Woods of speechmaking?

We're told that the two greatest human phobias are the fear of death and the fear of speaking in public.

Given the number of speeches required by the job and the very real danger of assassination, anyone who wants to become President of the United States has to confront both of these in large measure.

When you think about it, though, speaking in public is the most important thing a president does.

Otherwise, you or I could handle the position. We'd find the smartest people in every conceivable field, hire them, and take their advice whenever something unpleasant came up. How hard could that be?

Trouble in the Middle East again? Send in my Middle East experts. The stock market is in free fall? Call my economists.

We remember Presidents primarily for their speeches, not for what they did behind closed doors. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were wonderful speakers. George W. Bush, by any yardstick, is not.

In most cases, these memorable orators didn't even write the words that anchored them in history. They just said them.

Which brings me to Barack Obama, whom I heard speak at the E.C. Glass High School gymnasium on Wednesday night. Make no mistake about it -- the guy is good. Better than good.

Sure, a lot of what he said was straight form the political playbook, and there was nothing really new (we've already forgotten that Bill Clinton's favorite word was also "change"). It was all about the delivery.

Still young for a politician, Obama could become to speechmaking as Tiger Woods is to golf. Already, he has all the nuances down.

He was funny without being flip. Nice, but with an edge. Intellectual, without being too intellectual. Genially local without being pandering.

Not that his delivery was flawless. He said that John Edwards is our state senator, which of course he isn't (Edwards' House district is based in Smithfield, not even close) . He also seemed a little confused about Lynchburg's place in the economic sphere, although you have to cut him some slack fror that, because he may not have even known Lynchburg existed until Wednesday.

I'm not saying that this alone makes Obama a better choice than John McCain. Speaking as one of that great mass of undecideds, however, Maverick John is going to have to be pretty good to overcome what I saw at Glass.

What always amazes me about the best political candidates and rock stars is how they can manage to summon up the required energy night after night, city after city.

The prospect of spending Wednesday in Martinsville and Lynchburg couldn't have been terribly exciting to Obama. No doubt he's delivered essentially the same speech he gave at E.C. Glass a thousand times before (I remember once covering a Michael Dukakis campaign appearance in Richmond and seeing the reporters who were following his campaign mouthing his speech word for word).

These weren't even people he needed to convince. The organizers were quite upfront about this being a rally, even to the point of asking spectators to check their voting preference on the entry ticket. As he prowled around that little island in the middle of a packed gymnasium, Obama was surrounded by love and infused with the crowd's energy.

And maybe that's how he does it. Perhaps, like a human cell phone, he simply plugs himself into the audience every night and re-charges.

The contrast between Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Obama as speakers was classic. Webb, a no-nonsense sort of guy, stayed clued to the podium as if he were afraid it would float off he removed his hands from it. Obama asked that the podium be taken away and paced around with a hand-held microphone.

It was the little touches that impressed me. Most candidates use their "town meeting" time to answer pre-submitted questions. Obama picked out whom to recognize on the fly, even to the point of alternating between "boys and girls." The risk (albeit minimal) was that someone might come up with a hostile question, but that was outweighed by the perception that he was firmly in control. And when he got a question, he answered it at great length, not in a soundbite.

When an Iraq veteran stood up to be recognized, Obama said: "First, thank you for your service," and the audience stood and applauded the soldier.

One can argue that a lot of the proposals the Democratic candidate tossed out were of vague and probably overly optimistic. Moreover, candidates always say they're for "working Americans" and the middle class, because that's where most of the votes are coming from. It's pretty easy to demonize that top one percent that pulls in 20 percent of the country's wealth, because one percent will never cost you an election.

"If anybody out there is making more than two million, raise your hand," Obama said.

No one did, of course. Then, after a pause, he delivered the punch line: "I was hoping to find more big contributors."

Thanks to Murphy's Law (which was not passed by Congress), Obama's speech coincided with E.C. Glass' orientation for new students. Obama immediately seized on this for a funny line.

"In case some of you might be in the wrong place," he said, "this is not freshman orientation."

At another point, Obama accused the McCain camp of "trying to make me look like this risky, scary guy."

And he cocked his head and seem to shrink from that towering figure in the spotlight to what he is normally -- a skinny guy with big ears and a face you wouldn't look at twice on the bus.

"I don't think of myself as a scary guy," he said.

That is, unless you happen to be running against him.