I'm a little intrigued that you asked what we thought about him on a personal level -- is that an attempt to keep political arguments out of the thread? If so, a noble, but ultimately futile effort.
Anyway, personally, I don't have any real beef with the guy. He seems intelligent and reasonably thoughtful, and if nothing else I appreciate the relatively muted tenor of his rhetoric. And if his election means that African Americans get more involved in the political process, then at least one good thing will have taken place.
But really, we can't divorce a President's personal characteristics entirely from their performance. I've got plenty of theories about how Obama's life and personality may shape the direction of his administration, none of them terribly flattering. But it's early yet, and I'd like to give him a chance to surprise me at some point.
All that said: anyone who says they're happy with his performance to date -- even his supporters -- just isn't being completely honest with themselves. He's blatantly contradicted any number of campaign promises (Iraq withdrawal and transparency chief among them) and the market has reacted to a number of his statements and proposals with what can only be described as horror. And after eight years of Bush's opponents blowing their tops over the deficit, it's basically tripled in the first
half of the year. I eagerly look forward to a corresponding level of outrage, but something tells me I shouldn't hold my breath.
Here's the deal, though: the ideas are old. He's trotted out a number of extremely predictable, extremely tired liberal policy tropes, which clearly isn't what many people were looking for when they elected him. People elected him because they were frustrated and thought they might get someone fundamentally different from the politicians they've seen before; someone with genuinely new ideas. Thus far, he's been anything but.