Obama in '08
Something for Mrs. F

My wife, Mrs. F (that's Facade for those still scratching their heads), is a big fan of Barack Obama, going so far as to order a bumper sticker for our lil' flounder of a car proclaiming him as the man for the presidency in 2008. I'm still skeptical--as might be Mr. Obama himself--about his qualifications. But the more I watch the West Wing this season, the more I yearn for a candidate like Congressman Santos (the Jimmy Smits character), who sounds like what a real person sounds like (to some degree--there will always be a reined-in sense about any politician, not wanting to piss off potential constituencies) and who can speak to a wider demographic with messages of hope that seem far more grounded in reality. Of the candidates I see on the horizon, only Mr. Obama fits that mold.

BTW - my patience with Hilary Clinton is wearing wafer thin with her sponsorship of this new anti-flag burning amendment.

Anyhoo, Ryan Lizza over at The New Republic has an article just up on the site that provides reasons for why Mr. Obama should run for President in 2008.

The main objection to an Obama run is his obvious lack of experience. He needs at least a full Senate term before he is taken seriously, the argument goes. On the one hand, each day spent in the Senate gives Obama more experience and stature for his inevitable presidential campaign. But each day also brings with it an accumulation of tough votes, the temptations of bad compromises, potentially perilous interactions with lobbyists, and all the other behaviors necessary to operate as a successful senator. At some unknowable date in the future, remaining in the Senate will reach a point of diminishing returns for Obama. The experience gained by being a good senator will start to be outweighed by the staleness acquired by staying in Washington.

There's no way for Obama to know when he will reach this point. That uncertainty makes 2008 look like his best opportunity. He can be certain that 2008 will be a year with a wide open primary on both the Republican and Democratic sides in which neither a sitting president nor vice president will be running, a rare event in presidential politics that lowers the bar of entry for all candidates. He can have a high degree of confidence that if he waits until 2012, he will face the historically impossible task of unseating the incumbent president of his own party, or the historically difficult task of unseating the incumbent president of the opposition party. The 2016 race would probably be his final chance. But by waiting until then he would have to bet that the Senate has not destroyed his career, or, if he has moved to the safer confines of the Illinois governor's mansion--his next chance would be in 2010--that he has not already passed his political peak.

[...]

The biggest objection to Obama running for president just four years after being elected to national office is his lack of experience on national security. But experience is an overrated asset in presidential politics. It is conventional wisdom now that only during the interregnum between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of the war on terror could candidates lacking foreign-policy credentials win the presidency (i.e., Bill Clinton and George W. Bush). But John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan all won during the cold war without significant experience in world affairs.

And besides, Obama is already making a name for himself as one of the Democratic Party's national-security leaders. He recently visited Ukraine to inspect aging stockpiles of unsecured conventional weapons and is co-sponsoring legislation with Lugar to safeguard the munitions. The program is modeled on the famous Nunn-Lugar initiative to secure loose nukes. On Iraq, Obama, who opposed the war, has also staked out one of the more mature positions within his party. "Having waged a war that has unleashed daily carnage and uncertainty in Iraq," he said in a recent speech, "we have to manage our exit in a responsible way--with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis." At home, he has become the Senate leader on preparing for an outbreak of avian flu.

In fact, with these recent policy moves, Obama, who will be 47 in 2008--one year older than Bill Clinton was in 1992--sounds increasingly like someone who is considering a run. And if he isn't, he should.

Back to Hilary for a moment - here's a bit more on the anti-flag burning legislation she's putting her name to from Salon's War Room:

Clinton has agreed to co-sponsor a bill by Republican Utah Sen. Bob Bennett that would make it illegal for anyone to intimidate any other person by burning the flag, to burn someone else's flag or to desecrate the flag on federal property. At the same time, however, Clinton continues to oppose efforts to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag burning. Without such an amendment, it's not at all clear that Bennett's proposal would survive the inevitable trip to the Supreme Court. So isn't Clinton just trying to have her cake and eat it, too?