Urban legend has it that when he was in kindergarten, a very precocious Barack Obama wrote an essay in which he first revealed his intention to become President of the United States.

Some members of his senior staff were not so precocious. This is a light-hearted but revealing story of one future staffer’s ability to plan ahead, even when all he could do was string together an apparently disconnected set of drawings when he was asked to show and tell what he wanted to be when he grew up.

He began by telling his teacher and classmates that he had drawn some pictures to show what he would do when he grew up.

“You mean, what you will be when you grow up,” the teacher said.

“No,” said the boy. “What I will do when I grow up.” And he showed a picture of a big pile of money.

“Oh,” said the teacher. “So you want to be very rich when you grow up. And how much money do you think you will need?”

“About twenty-five million dollars,” said the boy.

“That’s a lot of money,” said the teacher.

“I know,” said the boy. “But it’s only the beginning.”

And he showed the next picture, which looked a bit like an organization chart.

“Once you have money, next you need a team,” the boy said with confidence.

“If that’s supposed to be an organization chart, it’s upside down,” said the teacher.

“I know,” said the boy, as he turned to his third picture.

“I see a round table with men and women sitting around it. There are some papers on the table. But what does this have to do with money and a team?” asked the teacher.

“You can’t do very much with money and a team unless you have good ideas,” said the boy softly while moving on to his next picture.

The teacher looked very confused. “What does a scrawny dark horse coming out of a starting gate have to do with money, a team, and good ideas?” asked the teacher.

“To succeed in life, you have to back a winner,” said the boy.

“But that horse doesn’t look like a winner,” said the teacher.

The boy ignored the teacher’s judgment, and showed his next picture. Now the scrawny dark horse was running neck and neck with a powerful white thoroughbred, with all the other horses far behind.

“To win, your horse must have speed and endurance,” said the boy as he moved on to a picture of the scrawny dark horse crossing the finish line just ahead of the thoroughbred.

But instead of a horse in the winner’s circle, the next picture showed a tall, thin black man standing in the center of a sports stadium surrounded by a multitude of people who seemed to be cheering and waving signs.

“So this is what it feels like to be a winner?” asked the teacher.

“No, not quite,” said the boy as he showed the teacher and the class a perfectly drawn map of the United States with some states colored red and a lot more states colored blue.

“That’s very nice,” said the teacher, who was ready to move on.

“And this is what it feels like to be a winner,” said the boy, as he showed a picture of the tall, thin black man with a black woman and two little black girls walking into a big white house.

“Thank you very much,” said the teacher as she wrote in her record book: “David Axelrod is very creative and draws very well, but he will not succeed in school or in life unless he learns to stick to a subject and organize his thoughts coherently.”

So, for all of you who have been misunderstood by a teacher who failed to see around the corner, here’s three big cheers for little David Axelrod, for his very perceptive chief executive, and for the A-Team David helped create.