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Obama's campaign off to a stirring start

Whether Obamamania is a passing fancy or a political phenomenon will play itself out over the next year in what promises to be a rigorous Democratic presidential primary. But Barack Obama's opening act in Springfield on Saturday, which played to 15,000 people who stood in single-digit temperatures to hear him speak, was an impressive start.

More than two years after his stirring performance at the Democratic National Convention, Obama is still drawing crowds and eliciting a passion that is so far his alone. His powerful oratory and biography certainly help explain the captivation, and even he acknowledges the extent to which hungry voters may see him as the untested vehicle for their own hopes. None of these explanations can be good news for his primary opponents, particularly front-runner Hillary Clinton, who is on the defensive over her support for the Iraq war. Obama reminds audiences that he opposed the war from the start.

Obama is comparatively short on political experience, having served eight years in the Illinois Senate before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. But voters in recent years sent a bodybuilder and a professional wrestler to governors mansions, and Obama is appealing to a post-baby boom generation who have only read about Ronald Reagan's "morning in America" or John Kennedy's "Camelot." His repeated call to a new generation, after all, is a page torn from the playbook of Hillary's husband, who had no Washington experience.

As if to underscore that point, Obama drew thunderous applause with his attempt to turn the tables Saturday: "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness, a certain audacity, to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

None of this relieves Obama of the necessity to produce cogent plans on the issues, such as universal health care and decent-paying jobs, that are part of his working platform. Nor should he be judged on a continuum where political experience is cynically deemed a liability. But what Obama brings to this otherwise predictable campaign season is what Hollywood calls the "it" factor.

Obama was born of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, was raised by grandparents, elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, and he to date is defying political convention. "One of my strengths, I think, as a leader," he said in Iowa, "is that there are a lot of different pieces of America in me."

There will be time for white papers and the unforgiving glare of constant public exposure, but Obama has introduced himself well. The self-described "skinny kid with a funny name" has shown he can inspire audiences, and that's a trait that is entirely presidential.

[Last modified February 13, 2007, 01:05:30]