Monday, February 12, 2007

Here Comes Obama! -- Vol. 3 Issue 24

Last Saturday, outside the historic Old Illinois Capital Building, Illinois’s junior Senator Barack Obama declared his presidential candidacy before a huge enthusiastic crowd. That crowd stood in the frigid 7 degree cold for hours before the Senator spoke. The real audience was the media, the American people and the rest of the world. Despite a general churlishness by the MSM correspondents like Chris Mathews and Joe Klein, the intense cold did not diminish the excitement of those who heard Obama’s speech. “I guess the Arctic Circle wasn’t available this morning,” quipped Chris Matthews, shivering during his live interview on NBC’s “Weekend Today” as he ruefully noted that anchor Campbell Brown was usually the one outside doing cold-weather reporting. See, WashingtonPost.com.

No doubt, Hilary Clinton and John Edwards took note of the rising star’s combination of popularity and seriousness of purpose. And there is something else about him; he looks sincerely happy, and that is rare among politicians running for President. Obama’s candidacy is being propelled by a powerful longing in the American people; the desire for someone NEW and DIFFERENT!  It is axiomatic, that the longer the campaign lasts, the euphoria tends to fade and eventually we will be left with unvarnished politics. Clinton, Edwards and Obama, only two of them will be on the Democratic ticket. That is, assuming Al Gore doesn’t join the fray. If that happens, all current bets are off.

So what did Barack Obama actually say? First, he did a tremendous job in both choosing the symbolic location for the announcement and in comparing himself to that other tall gangly Illinois lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Standing on the grounds of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech against slavery in 1858, Obama began a bid for the White House that hardly seemed possible just a few months ago but may make him the first black president. “I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness—a certain audacity—to this announcement,” he said. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” See, WashingtonPost.com. Later in the speech, he listed his ambitious policy plans for ending the war, eliminating poverty, ensuring universal health care and energy independence. Then he delivered the theme that I believe is the essence of his appeal to younger and disaffected voters: “What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans,” he said. “What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.”

It is true, that Senator Obama does not have enough scar tissue to be considered “tried and tested.” There has been no crisis in his life similar to the crises that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have experienced in their lives. Both of them should keep Satchel Paige’s advice in mind, “DON’T LOOK BACK SOMEBODY MIGHT BE GAININ’ ON YOU!

I love a horserace,

Savant