Obama-rama

As promised a few weeks ago, I would take an in depth look at Presidential candidates for the 2008 election. Even as someone who enjoys reading about politics, I realize how old this can get, considering the election is still a year off, so I'll try to spread out the pain as much as possible.

The first candidate I'll look at is Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Senator Obama is currently second for the Democractic nomination for President, following Senator Hillary Clinton. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. His father was a native of Kenya and his grandfather was a domestic servant to the British. His mother, who was white, was born in Wichita, Kansas. His parents met at the University of Hawaii at Monoa. Shortly after his birth, they divorced and he and his mother moved to Jakarta, Indonesia in 1967. Obama attended local schools from ages 6 to 10 before moving back to live with his maternal grandparents where he graduated high school. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, he admits having struggled during his teenage years, trying to reconcile with his multiracial heritage. He used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine to "push questions of who [he] was out of [his] mind."

Obama studied for two years at Occidental College and transferred to Columbia University, where he majored in Political Science and graduated in 1983. He entered Havard Law School in 1988, where he obtained his JD degree magna cum laude in 1991. He taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election into the Senate in 2004.

Why is he popular?

Barack Obama's popularity can largely be attributed to his newbie status in politics. From assesing his own popularity, Obama says it is largely from "people projecting their hopes on him." Many analysts would agree with this asessment. Though he is still trailing Hillary Clinton by nearly 10 percentage points, this reason for his popularity becomes apparent, with people looking for hope from Bush's current agenda either through new ideas (Obama) or through someone who might take the country back to a better time (Clinton.)

What does he need to watch out for?

As was proven in the 2004 election, things aren't always as they seem. Front runner Howard Dean, who was hugely popular among Democrats, was able to capture the Iowa Caucus. But his hopes of becoming President were dashed with the now infamous "Dean Scream" incident. Other areas that Obama needs to look out for are attempts by bloggers or the media to reveal true (or false) facts about his past. Few may remember the last ditch effort to steal the Presidency from Bush in 2004 with the release of an internet video showing him giving the "one-fingered victory salute" to a camera before an interview. A larger attempt was made by CBS to taint Bush's military record by running a false report using forged documents in the "Rathergate" incident. Already, Fox News has made a run on Obama claiming that while in Indonesia, he attended a Muslim Madrassa. From the way that they ran the story, it made look as though the "madrassa" he attended, which means school in Arabic, was in fact a school that preached radical Islam. In recent years, madrassa has frequently been used to mean a school that teaches radical Islamic beliefs. CNN came to Obama's rescue and actually visited the school, proving that while it was a madrassa, it did not preach radical Islamic principles. Obama has admitted that while his father was born and raised Muslim, the faith was not passed down to him and that he is a practicing Christian. With this much popularity this early, it is concievable that the many scandals that arise could in fact dash any hopes he has of being elected President. Only time will tell how much of an affect these will have on his campaign.