The tributes to John McCain by his close friends — Tom Ridge, Lindsey Graham, Fred Thompson, Joe Lieberman, Orson Swindle, and others — are interesting as a contrast. Politicians tend to be very social creatures, as they have to be; who else could spend a lifetime going to rubber-chicken dinners and pounding the flesh? We know about Reagan’s kitchen cabinet and the thousands of notes George Bush the Elder sent out and the Friends of Bill so numerous that the Clinton White House referred to them by the acronym FOB, and the thousands of Texans who think George W. Bush is their pal. Now we know about McCain’s.

It is striking that we know so little about Barack Obama’s friends. (Leave off the whole Bill Ayers question for now.) Profiles of him describe his years in college and law school with quotes from people who knew him or watched him or were very admiring of him, but were not especially friendly. In his book, Dreams from My Father, he describes a friend whose militancy and anger caused him eventually to keep his distance — but there isn’t much else.

Is he a lonely man? Is he an entirely self-contained man? Are his friends just extraordinarily discreet? All this adds to the unknowability that, it must be said, part of what has made Obama the compelling figure he is to so many people. But really, does he have friends?