Chicago Tribune Editorial - Is this Obama's time?

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Is this Obama's time?
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published October 20, 2006

If the crowd is large enough, even mumbles can grow deafening. So it is that the Democratic Party's sudden `It' candidate for the presidency in 2008 is an Illinois chap named Barack Obama.

Many rank-and-file Democrats would love to see Obama run. They see the first-term U.S. senator as an honest-eyed embodiment of charisma and content. He evokes what FDR and JFK evoked--a focus not on the tiresome past or the troubled present, but the ennobling future.

But many rank-and-file Republicans would love to see Obama run too. They relish a presidential candidate they would portray as an inexperienced prospect for a nation sure to be tested for many years in a war with Islamist extremists: Think Bambi, but more touchy-feely.

Barack Obama alone will decide whether this is his time. He has the luxury and the burden of mulling whether an attempt at the presidency would be good for his country, good for his family, good for him.

What some see as his reason to run now is, paradoxically, also his reason to wait:

- Senators rarely move up Pennsylvania Avenue (see Dole, Bob, and Kerry, John, two names among many). The likely reason: Their years in the Capitol leave them with long voting records for opponents to dismantle. Thus the thinking in some circles that Obama should leap into a presidential race before he has more experience, a.k.a. more of a record.

- The counterargument is that every election cycle is hostage to the context of its time. In the comparatively calm moments of 1976, 1992 and 2000, voters grew comfortable with newcomers to the national stage who knew little of foreign affairs--Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In ostensibly more challenging years such as 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1988 (George H.W. Bush), voters gravitated to candidates steeped in Washington experience. Come Nov. 4, 2008, as they cast their presidential votes in private booths, would Americans see Obama as refreshingly free of Washington baggage--or as a young man who still needs more seasoning?

Judging by numerous comments he's made over the years, Obama appreciates the immense distance from this heady autumn of 2006, as his face gazes up at him from the cover of Time magazine, to the swearing-in ceremony of 2009. Any candidate for the presidency must survive the long knives--which in Obama's case would be wielded first by some fellow Democrats in a long primary season, then by opposition Republicans. In his few campaigns thus far, he has barely had to survive hard-thrown Nerf balls, let alone tempered steel.

That said, there is reason to think Obama someday will clear the gantlet. He has handled beautifully his 19 months in the bright light of the U.S. Senate. He has, to his great credit, not strayed from his early message that America must rise above angry partisanship. Other candidates' abrasive attacks on him could, in voters' eyes, highlight his many strengths.

Is this Obama's time? His election cycle?

If he decides so, he'll bring a whale of excitement. And if he decides not, there'll be another one along soon enough.