'Run Obama! Run!' Could this be the next US president?
Democrats' new great hope takes New Hampshire testing ground by storm
Ed Pilkington in Manchester, New Hampshire
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian
When the governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, introduced his guest of honour at a rally to celebrate the state's Democratic routing of the Republicans in the recent midterm elections, he shared with the large, boisterous crowd a secret.
"We originally scheduled the Rolling Stones," he said, "but we cancelled them when we realised Senator Obama would sell more tickets."
He was rewarded with an outbreak of ecstatic whooping. But behind his joke there was a truth. Barack Obama had indeed sold the tickets - the ballroom of the Radisson hotel in Manchester was packed, its 1,500 tickets sold out.
Even seasoned observers of New Hampshire politics were rubbing their eyes in disbelief. The state is the stomping ground of would-be American presidents: every four years it is the first to hold primary elections for the presidential candidates of both main parties - 2008 will be no exception - and as such carries an influence far greater than its diminutive size. Its residents have grown blasé about being ritually courted by national political figures.
But this was different. There was nothing blasé about Sunday night's reception for the Senator from Illinois. When Mr Lynch suggested that Mr Obama might run, someone shouted "Run Obama! Run!" and the crowd erupted again.
John DiStaso, political columnist on New Hampshire's largest newspaper, the Union Leader, who has been covering the primaries since 1980, said he was astonished by such excitement so early in the electoral cycle. "I have never seen anything like it. I would think if Obama was looking for positive feedback about whether to stand, he's certainly found it here."
And it's not just in New Hampshire that Rolling Stones fever is taking hold. Mr Obama's new book, the Audacity of Hope, is number two in the bestseller lists of both the New York Times and Amazon. His face beams out of the front covers of glossy magazines: he has been profiled by Time, Newsweek, Men's Vogue, Harper's, New York magazine. In each, the authors grapple with political mass hysteria, unseen in Democratic circles since the early days of Bill Clinton, perhaps, or even the adoration of the Kennedy brothers. As Joe Klein put it in his Time profile: "Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow - a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy."
Mr Obama himself appears to be remaining impressively calm in the face of such billowing adulation. Before his New Hampshire speech he told reporters: "I am suspicious of hype. The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me, and a matter of bewilderment for my wife."
The comment is classic Obama - part self-deprecation, part dissembling. The question of will he or won't he stand for president has become the obsessive talking point for Democrats in New Hampshire and beyond, and he likes it that way. His official line is that he is weighing up his options - "running things through the traps" - but occasionally his language slips. At one point talking to reporters he compared himself to "the other candidates", revealing a firmness of purpose he has so far kept hidden.
As for those other candidates, only two Democrats so far have clearly announced their intention of standing: Iowa's governor, Tom Vilsack, and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who was also in New Hampshire over the weekend but attracted much less attention. Hillary Clinton, the natural frontrunner, is expected to make her declaration of intent early in the new year.
Yet it is in comparison with Mrs Clinton that both Mr Obama's strengths and weaknesses become most apparent.
His mother was white and from Kansas and his father was from Kenya and bequeathed his name to his son, but left the family to return home when Barack Jr was just two. Mr Obama plays heavily upon his racial and cultural origins in his books and speeches, endearing him to black and white audiences alike.
Then there is his age, at 45, which sets him apart from Mrs Clinton, 14 years his senior, and gives him claim - another parallel with JFK - to representing a new generation. It also gives him the latitude to reveal earlier youthful indiscretions: he confesses in his first book, Dreams from My Father, to having used marijuana (yes, he inhaled) and cocaine.
But questions of race and inexperience regularly arise. "Is America ready for a black president?" is hurled even more frequently at him than the question of a woman president is at Hillary. He faced it squarely on Sunday.
"Race is still a powerful force in this country, and there are certain stereotypes I will have to deal with. But I find that when people get to know you they will judge you on your merits."
Mark Mellman, a Washington-based pollster, believes that among Democratic supporters in the primaries, race will be in Mr Obama's favour: "People will grab the chance to make positive history - nominating the first black candidate for president."
His lack of experience is harder to answer. Mr Obama has spent just two years in the Senate compared with Mrs Clinton's six, or John Kennedy's 14 years in Congress before he became president.
Crucially, though, lack of experience is an advantage when those with experience are perceived to have got the US into such a mess. It means he is free of awkward voting histories - he can claim to have opposed the Iraq war when Mrs Clinton backed it.
When he stood up before the crowd in New Hampshire, he played on that: "We must understand that the might of our military has to be matched by the strength of our diplomacy."
That was just one of several buttons guaranteed to elicit yet more Democratic adulation: energy independence, raising the minimum wage, better pay for teachers, fiscal responsibility and universal health care. But what most inflamed the crowd was when he spoke about the American Dream. "What's hard, what demands courage, what's truly audacious, is to hope," he said. "People are hungry for something new. They are interested in being part of something larger than petty politics we have seen in the last few years. This is our time - a new generation that is preparing to lead."
