With 1st step, Obama shakes up 2008 race

WASHINGTON -- Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic Party's charismatic rising star, yesterday threw himself into the 2008 presidential race, threatening the front-runner status of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the carefully cultivated appeal to liberals by former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Obama, who has emphasized his life story as the biracial son of a Kenyan father and a Midwestern mother, formally set up an exploratory committee, the first step toward an official candidacy.

As he has flirted with a presidential run over the past several months, Obama drew enthusiastic support from Democrats eager for a new face in a field crowded with campaign veterans. While Obama has not laid out an agenda, his frequent call for "a new kind of politics" has resonated with voters who say they are tired of divisiveness in Washington.

An Obama candidacy was considered a long shot months ago, as attention focused on Clinton, one of the Democrats' best fund-raisers, and Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee who has made a strong appeal to labor unions and the party's liberal base.

But Obama, 45, has attracted tremendous interest from antiwar Democrats and from others in the party who worry that none of the better-known Democrats seeking the presidency is electable.

Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Obama, who was not in the Senate when the resolution was on the floor, has consistently opposed the unpopular war.

Support for the first-term senator has leapt in opinion polls in recent months: A CNN survey last week had the Illinois lawmaker second after Clinton.

But Obama also lacks the national campaign experience of some of his potential rivals and has not undergone the heavy scrutiny endured by the more seasoned presidential hopefuls.

"The initial magic of his candidacy has gotten a very unusual and strong response," said Lee Miringoff , director of the nonpartisan Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. But "it still remains to be seen" whether Obama can weather the examination and pressure of a presidential campaign.

"He's had a very good opening act, but now he will have to generate an equally strong act two," Miringoff said.

The creation of an exploratory committee is the first legal step in launching a presidential campaign. The committee is used by candidates to raise money and coordinate with their supporters. In a video announcement e-mailed to supporters yesterday and posted on the Internet, Obama stressed his desire to change the political atmosphere.

"It's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics," Obama said. "America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions."

Obama joins a pack of experienced Democrats in the race, including Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, is mulling a second run for the presidency and is expected to announce his intentions soon; spokesman Vince Morris said Obama's announcement would not affect Kerry's schedule.

Biden, Kerry, and Dodd all have spent more than two decades in the Senate; Obama has only two years.

Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Obama, said that the senator's dearth of experience in national politics is more than matched by his life experience as a lawyer, community activist, and state legislator who has lived in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Chicago.

"If you're looking for someone who's spent 15 or 30 years in Washington, Barack Obama is not your guy," Gibbs said. "I think people will be very comfortable with the fact that Barack Obama has the experience and judgment to be president."

Obama said he will spend the next few weeks listening and talking to supporters around the country -- much like Clinton's highly successful "listening tour" of New York State before she announced her plans to run for the senate there. Obama will announce his final decision Feb. 10 in his home state.

Clinton's office said the former first lady had no comment on Obama's move, and a press conference Clinton had planned for yesterday on her recent trip to Iraq was re scheduled for today for reasons her office said had nothing to do with Obama.

Obama joins just a handful of African-Americans who have sought the US presidency. But unlike previous black candidates, Obama has a potentially broader appeal, Democratic strategists say, because his politics are rooted closer to the center of his party.

"I don't think race is going to be a big problem. He has a far less threatening political characterization" than other African-American candidates who were products of -- instead of students of -- the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, said Ron Walters , director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

"The other black candidates ran from the edges, tried to develop a base on the edge and then go toward the center," Walters said, referring to previous candidates such as former representative Shirley Chisholm , the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton . "Obama is in a different place, and he launches his candidacy from that place."

Christopher Edley , dean of the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and an Obama supporter, said Obama's race would become an issue in the campaign, "positive or negative, and wishing otherwise won't make it so."

But he said Obama's "universality in themes and style would make an Obama candidacy about far more than race."

"He can express both the glass-half-empty heartache of America's unfulfilled promise, and the glass-half-full, immigrant optimism of what we all can be," said Edley, an specialist in race relations and politics.

Should he decide to launch a full-scale campaign, Obama will face an early test in the first-primary state of New Hampshire, where just 1 percent of the population is black.

But Obama received a warm reception in New Hampshire in December, staying more than an hour after a speech in Manchester to shake the hands of voters who traveled from 12 other states to see him.

"New Hampshire is typically very supportive of maverick candidates," said Kathleen Strand , spokeswoman for the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

"A lot of people [in New Hampshire] are very excited about Senator Obama and his message and the kind of campaign he's going to offer."