Re: Barack 2008!
Waytogo! He did it. I knew that...
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23005994-38198,00.html
Obama win shows he's a real contender
by Stephen Collinson in Des Moines
January 04, 2008 02:00pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
VICTORY in the Iowa caucuses has sent Barack Obama rocketing into a new political stratosphere, after a stunning rise from unknown to hot tip for the possible Democratic nominee in less than four years.
His defeat of Hillary Clinton in the key state is a powerful vindication for the 46-year-old freshman senator's soaring message of hope and generational political change, which thrills huge crowds wherever he travels.
It also confirms senator Obama, son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, as a genuine contender for the Democratic nomination, boosting his quest to become the first black president of the United States.
Senator Obama's express charge to the top of US politics, has been built on dazzling rhetorical skills and blazing charisma and a flashing smile, and attracted legions of young supporters embittered by the grime of modern politics.
He exploded onto the scene with a stunning speech at the Democratic national convention in 2004, and drew immediate comparisions with civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, and Democratic icons John and Bobby Kennedy.
Since then, he has developed his mantra of hope and change, and portrayed senator Clinton as a symbol of a fractured, political system desperate for renewal.
"There is a moment in the life of every generation when, if we are to make our mark on history, this spirit must break through," senator Obama said last week.
"This is the moment. This is our time."
Senator Obama often marvels at campaign events at how his life has changed, when just a few years ago he finished paying off his student loans and was able to shop for groceries in anonymity.
Now, he travels in Secret Service motorcades, jets around America trailed by a voracious media pack, and bears the political hopes of millions, in his crusade to do no less than redefine American politics.
After only two years in Congress, and time as a local legislator in Illinois, even senator Obama admits some see his campaign as premature. His latest book was called The Audacity of Hope.
Explaining why he did not wait his turn before running for president, senator Obama says he is driven by what King referred to as the "fierce urgency of now" - a fervent desire to ignite a grass-roots movement of political change.
He has often mused on the price he pays in running, given his idyllic home life with wife Michelle, and two young daughters Malia and Sasha.
Senator Obama has the best chance of all of the black Americans who have taken a run at the White House.
He bills himself as a spokesman for a new generation, implicitly separating himself from the civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose past presidential runs foundered on a lack of appeal to whites.
Born in Hawaii in 1961, senator Obama had an intriguing view of mainland America as he grew up, spending large periods of time in Hawaii and Indonesia.
The product of a broken marriage between his Kansas-born white mother and Kenyan economist father, he was shuttled between homes as a boy.
He said life in Indonesia opened his eyes to the extremes of poverty and wealth around the world, and the wrenching effect of political upheaval on ordinary people.
"It made me mindful of the huge gaps in opportunity that exist in many countries of the world. It also made me appreciate how deeply impoverished people can be - how issues of corruption can thwart opportunity," he said.
After graduating from high school, he attended Columbia University and then went to the elite Harvard Law School, where he was the first black American to hold the prestigious post as president of the influential Harvard Law Review.
While in university he also worked as a community organiser in New York's Harlem and Chicago's South Side, two of the country's toughest neighborhoods, all the while starting a family.
He plunged into politics in the midwest state of Illinois as a civil rights lawyer, spending three terms in the state senate before jumping at the chance to run for the US Senate in 2004 when a vacancy opened up.
His electrifying convention speech put the world on notice of a rising political star.
"There is not a black America, and a white America, a Latino America, and Asian America - we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America," he declared to roaring applause.