{"id":176,"date":"2006-10-29T21:22:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T20:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=176"},"modified":"2012-11-11T19:04:47","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T18:04:47","slug":"the-rise-and-rise-of-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"The rise and rise of Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Perhaps no other politician in America is generating as much buzz as the Democrat senator from Illinois. News articles and magazines are full of speculation that Obama will run for the White House in 2008.&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Cutting through the hype, the insider wisdom says it is still too soon for Obama. His national career is just two years old and he is too fresh-faced for a tilt at the biggest prize in global politics. Still, his career stretches ahead of him and he will run for the White House at some stage. Obama in 2008? Probably not. But Obama in 2012, 2016 or 2020? A certainty.&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These are extracts from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/usa\/story\/0,,1934252,00.html\">a full-page profile<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper of the American politician Barack Obama.<br \/>\nTwo years ago, I wrote series of blog postings on the Senate race in Illinois and highlighted the appealing features of Obama. Now everyone is talking about him for US president. It seems incredible that he should run so soon after arriving in Washington, but there is a very good reason for  him to run in 2008. Should there be a sitting Democrat president in 2012, Obama would not want to run against that person, so he would not  be able to run until 2016. By then his time may  have come and gone.<br \/>\nMy good friend Elaine Disch, who lives just outside Chicago and first drew my attention to Obama, sent me an interesting  article from the &#8220;Chicago Tribune&#8221;. which makes a case for running in 2008<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\n<b>Why Obama should run for president<\/b><br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\nBy Newton N. Minow<br \/>\nOctober 26, 2006<br \/>\nAfter losing the election for president for the second time in 1956, Adlai E.<br \/>\nStevenson gave the prestigious Gridiron speech in Washington. As a young<br \/>\nassistant and Stevenson law partner at the time, I was thrilled to be invited to<br \/>\naccompany him on the trip. The evening before the speech, we were at a small<br \/>\nWashington dinner party that included Sen. Jack Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, as<br \/>\nguests.<br \/>\nAt the time, I called Sen. Kennedy &#8220;Jack.&#8221; He thanked me for helping him try to<br \/>\nget the Democratic vice presidential nomination that summer. I said, &#8220;Jack, if<br \/>\nyou are still interested, I think you can be nominated for vice president in<br \/>\n1960.&#8221; He looked at me with his piercing eyes and replied, &#8220;Vice president?<br \/>\nNewt, I&#8217;m going to run for president!&#8221; I was stunned, and said, &#8220;Are you nuts?<br \/>\nYou are only 39 years old.&#8221; He said, &#8220;If I ever have a chance, it is next time.&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd, of course, he was right.<br \/>\nFifty years have gone by since that dinner-party conversation. Now we have<br \/>\nanother young man thinking about running for president. Sen. Barack Obama<br \/>\n(D-Ill.) is two years older than Kennedy was when he became president at age 43.<br \/>\nYet many people wonder whether Obama is ready to assume the responsibilities of<br \/>\nthe presidency. I believe he is ready, and here&#8217;s why.<br \/>\nOur country got off to a bad start in the new century. Sept. 11, 2001, the Iraq<br \/>\nwar, Iran and North Korea working on nuclear bombs, mammoth budget deficits,<br \/>\nfailure to address problems with Social Security, health care and<br \/>\nimmigration&#8211;all these issues have engulfed our country. We are disgusted by<br \/>\nexcessive partisanship and ethical lapses in both parties.<br \/>\nWe need a calm, reflective president who does not think the other party is<br \/>\ndriven by bad motives. His new book, &#8220;The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on<br \/>\nReclaiming the American Dream,&#8221; is a thoughtful, careful analysis of what needs<br \/>\nto be done to preserve our freedoms in a time of terror. For those who question<br \/>\nwhether he has enough experience to have good judgment, I remind them that it<br \/>\nwas Obama who had the wisdom and courage back in 2003 to warn, &#8220;Do not invade<br \/>\nIraq.&#8221; His service in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate earned the respect<br \/>\nof his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. He brings people together to find<br \/>\nconsensus and to find solutions to our problems. He is a different kind of<br \/>\npolitical leader. He is a peacemaker.<br \/>\nSecond, as David Brooks pointed out in his column in The New York Times last<br \/>\nweek, Obama is not an orthodox liberal. Obama is of a new generation, tired of<br \/>\nthe arguments about big versus small government. Instead, he wants smart<br \/>\ngovernment. He looks for sensible solutions either through governmental action<br \/>\nor marketplace approaches, whichever is appropriate for the circumstances. He is<br \/>\nthe opposite of an ideologue and has no interest in continuing the current<br \/>\nimpasse between liberals and conservatives.<br \/>\nThird, his unique background can heal racial and ethnic tensions that persist in<br \/>\nour pluralistic society. The reason Americans of all opinions liked his famous<br \/>\n2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention was that he transcended the<br \/>\nusual problems of race and gender and ethnicity and talked about &#8220;one America,&#8221;<br \/>\nnot blue or red states, but a vision of America&#8217;s future faithful to our ideals<br \/>\nand our Constitution.<br \/>\nFinally, I&#8217;ve been lucky enough to have known the senator and his wife,<br \/>\nMichelle, for more than 15 years. Michelle and Barack worked in our law firm in<br \/>\nthe 1980s. (Indeed, that is where they met!) My wife, Jo, and I kept in close<br \/>\ntouch with the Obama family for years. To those who wonder about whether he is<br \/>\nready to be president, we can testify that Barack and Michelle are true<br \/>\ngrown-ups. And that is exactly what we need in the White House.<br \/>\nBarack, Kennedy said 50 years ago, &#8220;If I ever have a chance, it is next time.&#8221;<br \/>\nThat is good advice for you.<br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<br \/>\nNewton N. Minow, a Chicago lawyer, was chairman of the Federal Communications<br \/>\nCommission from 1961 to 1963.<br \/>\nCopyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Perhaps no other politician in America is generating as much buzz as the Democrat senator from Illinois. News articles and magazines are full of speculation that Obama will run for the White House in 2008.&#8221; and &#8220;Cutting through the hype, the insider wisdom says it is still too soon for Obama. His national career is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9991,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/9991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}