Up until very recently, I assumed talk of Sen. [tag]Barack Obama[/tag] (D-Ill.) running for [tag]president[/tag] was idle speculation. He wasn’t going to run — and that was that.
And then a close associate of Obama’s told Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, “I’d put the chances [of a presidential campaign] right now at no better than 50 percent.” Since we’d been led to believe it was actually zero percent, 50% sounded pretty high.
[tag]Time[/tag]’s Joe Klein, who joined [tag]Obama[/tag] for some traveling recently and wrote this week’s cover-story on the senator, heard an even more provocative answer.
That he will eventually run, and win, is assumed by almost everyone who comes to watch him speak. In Davenport a local reporter asks the question directly: “Are you running for President in [tag]2008[/tag]?” Obama surprises me by saying he’s just thinking about the 2006 election right now, which, in the semiotic dance of presidential politics, is definitely not a no.
A few days later, I ask Obama the obvious follow-up question: Will he think about running for President in 2008 when the congressional election is over? “When the election is over and my book tour is done, I will think about how I can be most useful to the country and how I can reconcile that with being a good dad and a good husband,” he says carefully, and then adds, “I haven’t completely decided or unraveled that puzzle yet.”
I can appreciate the fact that Obama remains a somewhat controversial figure among the netroots — for the record, I remain a big fan — but it’s important to note that the senator’s interest in the 2008 race appears to be getting stronger. If he decides to move forward, it’s going to change the landscape considerably — Obama is one of only a handful of national figures who has the capacity “to toss the [2008] chessboard in the air.”
I should note, as long as we’re on the subject, that Ezra wrote a very good piece last week for the LA Times about why Obama should not run, at least not yet. Speaking as someone who would like to see Obama move forward with these burgeoning plans, I read the piece with some skepticism, but found it surprisingly persuasive.
There are, to be sure, ways Obama could prove his mettle, not to mention his priorities. He could, say, make universal healthcare coverage his public obsession or demand an end to the war in Iraq. He could fight for full public financing of all campaigns, or seek a national living wage.
But until then, if Obama gleams, Democrats have no way of knowing if it’s because he’s truly an action hero or because he’s refused to step out of his packaging. And until that question is answered, the hardened fighters they know are preferable to the attractive cipher they don’t.
Perhaps, but I’m still a sucker for the “audacity of hope.” For all the talk about Dems appealing to unaffiliated centrists by moving to the middle, Obama appeals to those same centrists by framing progressive beliefs in a more appealing ways. He inspires by making liberalism patriotic. He’s a presidential candidate who would be welcome everywhere, not just “blue” states.
There’s also the undeniable effect he has on people. From the Time piece:
[A]s we traveled that Saturday through downstate Illinois and then across the Mississippi into the mythic presidential-campaign state of Iowa, Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow — a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy. Bill Gluba, a longtime Democratic activist who sells real estate on both sides of the river in the Quad Cities area, reminisced about driving Bobby Kennedy around Davenport, Iowa, on May 14, 1968. “I was just a teenaged kid,” he says. “But I’ll never forget the way people reacted to Kennedy. Never seen anything like it since — until this guy.”
There aren’t many people, on either side of the aisle, who make these kinds of impressions.