Obama '08?

I've considered Obama a stronger contender than Hillary since Soz started the thread... but frankly I am stunned at how fast he's closed the gap. Being two years out, I think his progress is amazing. Obama fans should be very excited.

Just who does Barack Obama think he is? The first-term U.S. senator from Illinois goes on NBC, says he is considering a run for president in 2008 and suddenly news reports have him jumping into second place among Democrats eying the White House.
I wrote last week of Virginia Gov. Mark Warner pulling out of the race. At about the same time, Michael Barone in usnews.com wrote: "With Warner gone, Democrats are essentially left with Hillary (Clinton) vs. various retreads."
Not so fast, said Joe Klein in Time, alluding to Obama's unexpected announcement following Warner's withdrawal. "Rarely have I seen a politician inspire such awe and ecstasy," Klein wrote. While promoting his top-selling book, Obama presents himself as someone who can bring the nation together the way John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt did, says Klein.
Is Obama the new "anti-Hillary" now that Warner is gone?
Such questions aside, doesn't Obama realize he has to pay his dues? Doesn't he realize there are people like Bill Richardson who have been talking openly about wanting to be president for nearly two decades?
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Richardson became a liability and wasn't going anywhere except back to New Mexico. After Republicans claimed the White House, Richardson turned to Plan B and settled in as New Mexico governor. But he never took his sights off the presidency.
He's been running informally for president probably since the late 1980s. Still a long shot, he is trying to determine if he could gain traction for the 2008 race. If he concludes he can, he'll openly start soliciting funds and other support early next year.
It's been quite a process.
Suddenly Obama, a 45-year-old just two years into his first Senate term, steps forward and allows that he might join the 2008 campaign. Now, everybody's talking?- about him. Obama gives a rousing speech at the 2004 Democrat nominating convention, writes a pretty decent book and charms voters of diverse backgrounds while touring the country and for the moment, at least, Richardson is bumped well off the radar screen.
Voters, we're told, appear tired of calculating, programmed, punishing, ensconced politicians.
Imagine that.

And from the print edition (page A7) the caricature

FOR a technological dinosaur, the book-publishing industry is having a stellar political season. The bloggers may type the night away, but it is good old-fashioned book-writers who are driving the political debate.

And nobody more so than Barack Obama. The junior senator from Illinois has deftly used the publication of his new book?-"The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" (Crown)?-to stir up a frenzy about a possible presidential run. In recent weeks, he had already made the covers of two big magazines?-Time ("The next president") and Men's Vogue. Then on October 22nd he admitted that he had "thought about the possibility", and would make his final decision after the mid-terms. Since then it has been all Obama all the time.

This is bad news for lots of Democrats with less exotic names. Several pundits have pronounced the Democratic primary a two-horse race between Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton, which is overstating things. John Edwards is strong with the grassroots; Al Gore is a still-rumbling volcano. But Mr Obama, who is 45, has transformed the race, jumping over greybeards such as John Kerry and giving the Democratic Party its biggest shot of excitement for years.

Mr Obama's not-quite-declaration is especially bad news for Mrs Clinton. The junior senator for New York has spent the past six years?-some would say nearly six decades?-buffing her presidential credentials. She has supported the war in Iraq to prove that she is "tough enough", made nice with her Republican tormentors and hoovered up Democratic money. And now a mere greenhorn, who was marking law papers when she was co-running a "two-for-the-price-of-one" presidency, has shoved her out of the limelight.

What makes this all the more galling for the Clintonistas is that one of Mr Obama's most obvious advantages is that he is not Hillary. Mrs Clinton comes with a pantechnicon full of baggage. (What exactly has Bill been doing to amuse himself in New York these past few years, for example?) Mr Obama, by contrast, is fresh-faced and, so far as we know, baggage-free. Nor is he above offering a gentle reminder of what people disliked about Clintonworld. "When I was a kid I inhaled," he said bravely this week. "That was the point."

Mr Obama has no shortage of positive qualities. He is a superb public speaker?-his address to the 2004 Democratic Convention turned him into a celebrity even before he was elected to the Senate?-and bright with it. He is also black. It is hard to overestimate the extent to which many Americans would like to elect a black man?-or at least one of Mr Obama's calibre. The product of a mixed marriage?-his mother was "white as milk", in his words, and his father, a Kenyan rather than an African-American, "black as pitch"?-he is still black enough to dodge the "Oreo" slur. His father left his mother when he was two; he was brought up by his grandparents. Common, a rapper, has even devoted a line to him: "Why is Bush acting like he trying to get Osama? Why don't we impeach him and elect Obama?"

Mr Obama's rapid rise has inevitably provoked criticisms. One is that he is a young man in a hurry. He should take his turn in the queue?-get a Senate chairmanship under his belt, and learn the ways of Washington. Such advice is either malign or misguided. The 2008 race is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?-with the nominations open on both sides and the country desperate for a fresh face and a new direction. If he waits until 2012, he will have to take on an incumbent president; by 2016 he could well be yesterday's news. And a Senate record is a wasting asset. At best, you accumulate hostages to fortune in the form of controversial votes; at worst, you contract senators' disease, droning on about mark-up, earmarks, filibusters and cloture.

The second criticism has more substance: that Mr Obama is a lightweight. How would a man who has no foreign-policy or military background fare against John McCain, the Republican front-runner? And how would someone with no executive experience deal with Mitt Romney, a successful entrepreneur and Republican governor? Mr Obama's political philosophy is all about blurring boundaries where it is not pure waffle. Politics involves making difficult decisions, not dodging them.

Not just a pretty face

That said, Mr Obama is tougher than he seems. His rhetoric is as carefully calculated as it is well crafted. He knows that the presidential vote is the most personal vote Americans cast: people voted for John Kennedy (who was only 43 when he was elected) because of his stardust, not his record. He knows that Americans want a president who can get beyond the politics of division. And he knows that Americans are suckers for optimism. If Bill Clinton was the man from Hope, Mr Obama is the man with the audacity of hope.

And beneath all the rhetoric is a tough-as-nails professional. Mr Obama took on a crowded Democratic field in the 2004 Illinois Senate primary to capture 53% of the vote. He has delivered plenty of pork to Midwestern interests?-including championing domestic ethanol production, to save the planet, while opposing the lifting of tariffs on cheaper Brazilian ethanol. This is not a man who is above raising doubts, albeit subtly, about Mr McCain's age or Mr Romney's pandering to the religious right.

In 1995 Colin Powell used the launch of his memoirs to explore a presidential bid. He sold 2.6m copies of the book, but got cold feet about running. Mr Powell's punishment is that he will go down in history not as America's first black president but as an enabler of a war he privately thought a mistake. The Democratic Party needs to think carefully about picking a charismatic neophyte over a more seasoned operator. But it looks as though Mr Obama will be there to give them the choice.

Fifty-five percent of voters surveyed supported Patrick, while Healey, the Republican nominee, was backed by 30 percent. Independent Christy Mihos received 7 percent, and Green-Rainbow Party candidate Grace Ross got 1 percent. Six percent said they were undecided.

Yeah, I saw that maybe two weeks ago, doesn't seem to have much to it. We'll see.