What is it about Barack Obama that inspires such pions in people?

I'm talking both sides. This obviously doesn't apply most people, but you do hear some people on one side calling him, "The Messiah", "The One", and on the other side you hear people calling him, "The Antichrist", and comparing him to Adolf Hitler. This just seems strange to me. Certainly plenty of vitriolic things are said about politicians in the course of a campaign, but I can't recall any other political figure, in my lifetime anyway, who inspires these pions. I don't recall hearing anything this extreme about McCain, Kerry, Gore, either Clinton, Dole, etc. People will say, well there were some people who compared the current President Bush to Hitler, and that is true, but this only happened after Bush had made some controversial decisions, namely, the invasion of Iraq. Obama has made no such controversial decision, he really made no waves in the Senate and hasn't even been inaugurated as President yet. So, I'm not really looking for your opinion on the President-elect personally, I just wonder what you think gets people so crazy one way or the other about him. Certainly his race must have something to do with it, but it seems so much deeper than that.