Even before Senator Barack Obama entered public life, he was honing his political skills and mastering self-control.

By JODI KANTOR

DENVER - From the earliest days of his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama’s aides have heard the same mantra. He repeated it after debates and appearances, after victories and defeats. “I need to get better,” he says.
In the way Mr. Obama has trained himself for competition, he can sometimes seem as much athlete as politician. Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, say friends and aides, that he has established dominion not only over what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses.
“He doesn’t inhale,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist.
But some of the same qualities that have brought him just one election away from the White House - his virtuosity, his seriousness, his ability to inspire, his seeming immunity from the strains that afflict others - may be among his biggest obstacles to getting there. There is little about him that feels spontaneous or unpolished, and even after his two books, thousands of campaign events, and countless hours on television, many voters say they do not know him.
Mr. Obama, 47, is the first presidential candidate to come of age during an era of relentless, 24-hour scrutiny. “He is, more than any other contemporary political figure, a creature of these times,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer, who campaigned with him in Oregon this spring.
His uncanny self-assurance and smooth glide upwards have brought complaints from his opponents, first Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Senator John McCain. Other critics say that he has not spent enough time earning and learning, and that his main project in his life has been his own ascent.
Mr. Obama has encountered stubborn resistance from some older, workingclass whites, who may be uncomfortable with his race - he is the son of a white mother and black father from Kenya - or age.
But he can also seem very far from their troubles. While Mr. Obama has known struggle - his mother relied on food aid at times and he worked as a community organizer in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods -he shows no hint of struggle himself. While he tries to assure those voters that they have much in common, his ease before crowds of 75,000 and his eloquence can belie his point.
As a law student, he mused about wanting to be mayor of Chicago; as a law professor, he talked about running for governor of Illinois; not long after that, he was running for president.
Starting in law school, Mr. Obama began pulling together a large cast of mentors, well-connected and civic-minded friends who rose in Chicago and Illinois politics along with him, even a spouse he thought was ideal.
“He loved Michelle,” said Gerald Kellman, Mr. Obama’s community organizing boss, but he was also looking for the kind of partner who could join him on his climb. “This is a person who could help him manage the pressures of the life he thought he wanted,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s campaign touts accomplishments from his days in the Illinois state senate: he successfully championed campaign finance and racial profiling laws, as well as childcare subsidies and tax credits for the working poor. But “he didn’t participate in rank and file things,” said John Corrigan, a former consultant to the Democratic caucus of the Illinois State Senate. “He was destined for something bigger than potholes.”
And in the United States Senate, Mr. Obama is chairman of a subcommittee on European affairs, but has not held any oversight hearings to look into foreign policy issues .
The McCain campaign has mocked their opponent as a self-consumed star, even suggesting that he has a messianic complex.
Despite the speed of Mr. Obama’s rise, he talks of politics as a closed system, one stacked against outsiders who lack powerful patrons or wealthy donor bases. But now that he is officially his party’s nominee, it will be hard to call Mr. Obama anything but part of that establishment.
Even those closest to him are not quite sure how he will make the transformation. “You need to accept that role to a degree if you’re the nominee or the president,” Mr. Axelrod acknowledged. And yet, “I don’t think that’s a role he wants to play,” he said. “His idea is that you should always be challenging the nstitution.”