"In electing presidents we are also choosing stories," Newsweek editor Jon Meacham wrote in his March 31 letter to readers. "Obama's personal narrative is a crucial element of his campaign."

Meacham may be stating the obvious here, but it underlines one of the reasons the media seems to be so fascinated with the presidential candidate and all the different ways magazines portray him: the contender, the new hope, the impassioned speaker, the suave sartorialist, the debonair intellectual, the family man, the fresh alternative—even, as Tiger Beat reported, the senator who sings in the shower.

And on magazine covers, telling the tale of thousands of words, there's been an effort to capture them all: