the best lunchbreak ever, or: the top 5 reasons Barack Obama should run for Prez in 2008

Today, instead of eating a sandwich down the street from my office, on my lunch break I went and heard the maybe-next-President-of-the-United-States, Barack Obama.

He’s currently touring around the country promoting his new book, “The Audacity of Hope.”  I haven’t read it yet, but I have read his autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” and it was excellent.  But of course it was - this man is eloquent, and he has a great story to tell.

He spoke this afternoon about the title of his book, which he got from a sermon that his minister in his South Side Chicago church gave a few years ago.  He said:

“It takes a certain audactiy to feel hopeful in the face of a harsh reality…  We feel cynical about politics; we feel despairing about the state of the world.  But we can look squarely at our probelsm and still find some common ground, and some common values.”

Not a bad topic for a book these days.

He’s just an amazing speaker.  In case you missed his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, here’s a little taste.  Read it, and just try not to get a little misty-eyed:

“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes.”

It’s been a big news week for Obama.  His face is on the cover of Time Magazine, and he’s Harper’s cover-story as well.  NYT’s in-house conservative, David Brooks, has a piece today urging Obama to run for President.

So I’m going to jump on the Obama 4 President bandwagon myself, because even though I only heard him speak for about 10 minutes, today was the best lunch break I’ve had.

The Top 5 Reasons Obama Should Run (in 2008):

(5)  The guy’s got charisma.  He turned out about 500 people in the middle of the day, in a book store, in a state where he’s not the Senator.  And we were psyched!  There aren’t a lot of people who can inspire such high levels of applause and excitement from a bunch of New Yorkers at noon on a workday.  He did.  He’s charming, and exhilarating, as we all learned when he took the DNC by storm.

(4)  He’s smart.  It’s been interesting having a national leader who “follows his gut,” but let’s try one who follows his brain.  Obama’s college and law school pedigree (Columbia and Harvard Law – where he was editor of the Law Review) are impressive, and unlike Bush Jr, he didn’t get in cause of his daddy.

(3) Speaking of his daddy… Barack’s dad is from Kenya, and his mother is from Kansas.  That’s not a good enough reason in and of itself, but it’s a good metaphor for Obama’s broad appeal.  He rightly describes himself as ”both an African and an American,” he went from the ivory towers to the South Side of Chicago, and he’s at home with all kinds of different folks.  He could actually be a uniter and not a divider.

(2)  I’ve had just just about enough of the, “I don’t know if America’s ready for a black President” argument.  Get over it, people.  The people who would be outraged at the idea of black president aren’t voting for any Democrat.  So let’s not, as a party, pander to a bunch of swamp-dwelling racists. 

(1) Oprah wants him to!  Barack was on The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday, and she urged him to run, saying, “I know I don’t just speak for myself.  There are a lot of people who would want to see you run for the presidency.”  An endorsement from Oprah is a good place to start a campaign.  If she could get everyone who bought a copy of “A Million Little Pieces” to cast a vote for Obama in ‘08, we’d be all set.