-
Is He For Real?: What's making
Sen. Barack Obama the one to watch -- and the one freaking out the GOP -- in the '08 time trials?
On a winter afternoon two years ago, Senator Barack Obama took his oath of office and strolled across the Capitol grounds hand-in-hand with his wife and two daughters. At the time, a question from his 6-year-old sounded precocious. Now, it seems prescient.
“Are you going to try to be president?” Malia Obama asked her father, giggling as a television camera captured the moment. “Shouldn’t you be the vice president first?”
Her innocent musings go straight to a threshold issue Mr. Obama faces as he edges closer to entering the presidential race: his limited experience in national politics.
But they only hint at a complex matrix of questions swirling around his prospective candidacy: Is he simply a first-term liberal Democrat long on charisma who is enjoying a brief moment of fame? Is he, as some of his more enthusiastic fans seem to feel, the post-partisan, post-racial, post-baby boom embodiment of a new brand of politics? Does he have the drive and discipline to survive a wide-open presidential campaign?
Put more bluntly: Is he for real?
“He’s so incredibly skilled, but he’s also had a lot of luck,” said Abner Mikva, a White House chief counsel in the Clinton administration and a longtime friend of Mr. Obama’s. “Hopefully people don’t think the media just puffed him up and he’s a flash in the pan.”
Even his aides wonder if he can meet lofty expectations, which have elevated him beyond a politician’s normal realm, thanks to his celebrity, ambition and biography.
While a presidential campaign would highlight Mr. Obama’s strengths as a lyrical communicator and personable campaigner, it also could expose the shortcomings of a 45-year-old politician not fully developed, and one who will not enjoy the luxury of learning in obscurity.
The next phase of his political development will inevitably draw intense and less flattering scrutiny, particularly if he goes head to head with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination; he has already spent considerable time explaining what he now calls a boneheaded mistake of entering a land deal with a Chicago operative who has been indicted on charges of influence peddling. His race — he is the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya — could make his candidacy that much more complex.
The Washington Post says that Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton are
sucking the oxygen out of the room for other Democrats.
What once shaped up as a sizable field of Democratic candidates is now shrinking. Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) announced on Dec. 16 that he would not seek the Democratic nomination, a surprising decision that came just days after he witnessed firsthand the megawatt voltage of Obama's drawing power in New Hampshire. As Bayh drew small crowds on his seventh trip to the Granite State, Obama enjoyed sold-out audiences and saturation coverage on his first.
Bayh became the third Democrat to quit the race before Clinton or Obama have taken formal steps to enter. Former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner and Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) abandoned their bids after lengthy periods of exploration. All chose not to run for their own reasons, but Obama's sudden emergence creates a significant obstacle to those hoping to become the alternative to front-runner Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest.
"Simply put, it's the Obama factor," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. "Obama's entry into the presidential race essentially raised the ante. Candidates who used to do careful exploration with the hope that they could catch fire in Iowa and New Hampshire and move from there recognize that there's no oxygen left out there for their candidacies."
Republicans have their own celebrity candidates in Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, but they cast a far smaller shadow on their rivals. Those so far sidelined in the GOP race -- Sens. Bill Frist (Tenn.) and George Allen (Va.) -- have landed there through their own mistakes, not the looming presence of the two early poll leaders.
Dominating candidates are not new to presidential campaigns, nor is it uncommon for some politicians to explore a candidacy but not run. In 1992, many prominent Democrats chose not to run, fearful that President George H.W. Bush could not be defeated. In 2000, George W. Bush was the clear front-runner for his party's nomination, but the Texas governor still drew a large field of rivals. The winnowing did not begin until late summer of 1999 -- nine months later in the process than is happening this time.
-
A Visit from St. Nicholas: Okay, enough politics for the day. Enjoy this little
poem by Clement Clark Moore.
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."
