He is as cool as ever—the Mr. Spock of modern American politics, a man who can do the split-fingered Vulcan salute and intone “Live long and prosper,” a tribute to the television series that “Barry” Obama first watched growing up in Honolulu more than half a century ago. To visitors and staffers who call on him in his Washington offices, in the West End section of the capital, near Georgetown, the former president’s conversations are thoughtful and wide-ranging. As he works on his much-anticipated memoir (there is no firm publication date), he is able to toggle between timelines, free to choose among stories from his campaigning days for the Senate in downstate Illinois to Iowa vote totals, or from American demography to the state of global democracy. In his off-duty wardrobe of jeans and a casual shirt, a go-cup of tea at hand, still graying subtly but surely, and looking even leaner than in his White House days, he tends to take the longest of views on the state of the nation since his successor assumed power. Recently, he has sagely remarked to those who ask, worriedly, about the Age of Trump: “Things are never as good as we think when they’re going well, and never as bad as we think when they aren’t.”

Barack Hussein Obama has been like this forever: unflappable when everyone else is flapping wildly, reasonable in a swirl of passion. Ten years ago this month, he was elected as the 44th president of the United States, a moment more than a few Americans had not believed they would live to see. In the weeks after Obama defeated John McCain, in 2008, I asked George H. W. Bush if he had thought an African-American could win the presidency in his own lifetime. “No, I didn’t,” Bush 41 replied. “But then I met him, and I totally get how he did.”

And therein lies a fundamental element of the Obama story: he is the particular that made the general possible. There is an ancient debate about the relative role of human agency in history—a fancy way of speculating about whether events are shaped more by broad forces (demography, economics, geography) or by the characters and characteristics of individual leaders at a given moment. The answer is usually mixed, but there’s no doubt that, say, Abraham Lincoln’s political gifts and moral compass enabled him to save the Union when others might have failed. Or that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s complexities informed his ability to rescue capitalism and lead a reluctant nation to global responsibility.

These are early days for a historical verdict on Barack Obama. But it seems safe to say that his background—as a child raised in Hawaii, the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father, together with the hyper-vigilant care with which he approached the task of living a life balancing disparate traditions, influences, and worldviews—was critical to his rise to the pinnacle of American power. Never a candidate of grievance, he won majorities in two national elections by appealing to the future, not by exploiting the past or by fueling familiar culture wars.

Obama has always led a charmed political life. Though the young state senator’s credit card was rejected when he tried to rent a car while attending the 2000 Democratic National Convention, in Los Angeles, things quickly turned in his favor. Four years later, political opponents in Illinois imploded all around him, opening a path to the U.S. Senate. (A rival for the Democratic nomination was accused of physically assaulting his ex-wife, and the Republican nominee dropped out after his former wife said that he’d asked her to accompany him to sex clubs. Both candidates denied the allegations.) And four years after that, during the presidential campaign, the Great Recession erupted on the Republicans’ watch, and fate helped hand the orator, conciliator, and hope-and-change nominee a landmark victory—not once but twice.