- BOSTON -- Who is the smart
bet for first black president of the United States? Less than a decade
ago, Colin Powell was the man - and to this day, some believe the general
might have beaten Bill Clinton back in 1996. Today the mantle has fallen
on a somewhat more improbable figure - Barack Obama.
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- American political junkies love nothing better than to
plot White House match-ups down the line, and nothing brings out the habit
like convention season, when vast amounts of hot air are expended, but
nothing much happens. The match-up of the year, in this case George Bush
and John Kerry, has long since been talked to death.
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- The public topic here in Boston is whether Mr Kerry can
galvanise swing voters and win back the White House. The unofficial one
is more fun: what happens in 2008 if he doesn't, or in 2012 if he does?
A Kerry win this year would obviously make his running mate, John Edwards,
heir apparent. A loss would put Hillary Clinton squarely in the frame.
But 2016, and Barack Obama - Barack who? The mystery only deepens when
you learn the person in question is but a state senator in Illinois, who
is a Democratic candidate, and it must be said, clear favourite in the
contest for the open US Senate seat in the state in November's election.
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- Yet this 42-year-old politician, all but unknown nine
months ago and who has not yet set serious foot in Washington DC, has already
been glowingly profiled in New Yorker magazine, and scrutinised by the
most distinguished political columnists in the land. Last weekend, Mr Obama
was the headline guest on the country's top-rated Sunday talk show, NBC's
Meet the Press. Tonight he receives a rookie's crowning distinction - picked
to deliver the keynote speech that will cap the convention's second day.
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- One reason for this astonishing showcasing is simple:
it can only boost the Democrats' chances of capturing the US Senate seat
held by the retiring Republican incumbent, Peter Fitzgerald. Given the
host of tricky seats the party must defend, a gain in Illinois is vital
if the Democrats hope to regain control of the Senate they lost two years
ago. If a little primetime exposure helps the cause, then so much the better.
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- Also Mr Obama's background - exotic even by US melting
pot standards - dovetails perfectly with the party's aim to appeal across
class and race.
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- His father was Kenyan, his mother came from Kansas. The
couple met in Hawaii, and sealed a union appreciated neither in Africa
nor on the Great Plains. She later married again, to an Indonesian oil
executive, and the new family moved to Jakarta. Then life's winding road
led Mr Obama back to the US - to California, Chicago and Harvard law school,
where he was the first black president of the Law Review. But political
calculation, and even that perfect CV are only the part of it.
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- The keynote speaker is someone whom party elders reckon
will be a big part of the Democratic future. Traditionally the speech,
setting the party in the spirit of the times, is delivered by an especially
bright rising star. In 1988 for instance, the keynoter was a young Arkansas
governor named Bill Clinton - even though his memorably turgid speech was
the biggest bomb of his otherwise illustrious oratorical career.
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- Mr Obama, like the former president, has magnetism. He
is slender, seemingly ever smiling, conveying the awareness that great
honour has been heaped upon him, but serving notice that he will keep a
very level head amid all the fuss.
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- But he is considerably more than a pretty face.
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- He is on the left of the party, not least on Iraq. Back
in summer 2002, he declared that Saddam Hussein's decrepit regime was no
threat to anyone, its weapons' capability much exaggerated, and that the
US had no business launching an invasion. John Kerry, among others, thought
otherwise, but events have proved Mr Obama right.
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- More important, he has a rare knack of making liberal
positions sound reasonable. He can advocate a larger role for government
in mapping national economic policy, without coming across as a tax-and-spend
liberal. He also has long espoused what is now Democratic orthodoxy, that
the party should keep its nerve and carry the battle of ideas to Republicans.
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- So the Barack boom continues. He has been helped by the
shambolic Republican efforts to find a candidate to oppose him in Illinois.
(Two have dropped out amid scandal, and a putative third, the former coach
of the Chicago Bears NFL football team, decided that the venture wasn't
worth the trouble.) Ahead by 20 points in the polls, he seems destined
to win. And then who knows? By 2012, he will have been US senator for eight
years (just like the John Kennedy in 1960) and by 2016, he will be a very
presidential 54 years of age. Of such stuff are convention scenarios spun.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=545067
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