Senator Barack Obama: Will He Run for President and What Will Hillary Clinton Do About It?

Who is Barack Obama? He is maybe our next President, if one believes certain, swooning pundits. He is certainly a big headache for another next President of the United States.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot be a happy person as she eyes the landscape of the upcoming Presidential election season. Of course it can be said that she has had few happy moments in the past thirty years, humiliated and set up for scorn as she has been by the behavior of her husband, but that is another matter.

On the surface, the landscape of the upcoming election looks pretty good for Hillary Clinton. She is as much as twenty points higher than any other Democrat in the polls. She has access to dump trucks full of money and the support of numerous Democratic power brokers. She has at her command the well oiled political machine that put her husband in the White House twice and is just itching to help effect a Clinton revival.

And by the way, Dick Morris' theory that she will drop Bill and become President Rodham the moment she wins the election is bunk. Bill Clinton as "First Gentleman" inside the White House has the constant potential for embarrassment. An aggrieved Bill Clinton, divorced, scorned, rejected, is a ticking thermonuclear bomb. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your philandering, out of control husband closest of all.

Besides the minor matter of having to beat a Republican in the fall of 2008, Hillary Clinton has one, someone unexpected obstacle between her and the office that is her destiny, indeed her birthright for thirty years of having to look the other way as Bill jumped on every bimbo that crossed his line of sight. He goes by the improbable name of Barack Obama, he is a United States Senator, he identifies himself as an African American, though his mother was Caucasian and his Kenyan dad abandoned him when he was two, and many liberal Democrats consider him the hope of the future.

Barack Obama is why Hillary is unhappy. Where Hillary is shrill on the stump, Obama is eloquent. His keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was even praised by Rush Limbaugh. Where Hillary has a sordid past, Obama has an inspiring one, if one overlooks the pot and cocaine experimentation about which, unlike Bill Clinton, Obama is honest. And there are no bimbo eruptions in Obama;s past. Obama is even being compared to Jack Kennedy, always a bad sign when thinking of a potential Democratic candidate.

During a recent campaign swing of New Hampshire disguised as a book tour, Obama was greeted with swooning crowds ready to hang upon his every word. This is despite the fact that Obama's political resume includes eight years in the Illinois State Senate and just two years in the United States Senate. By contrast, Jack Kennedy had six years in the US House and eight years in the US Senate by the time he ran for President in 1960. If Obama becomes President, it will be after just four years in the Senate, not even a full term.

Obama, while he has a charismatic persona, has a voting record which is conventionally liberal. No outside the box thinking or triangulation for him. He has opposed tax cuts and Social Security reform, calling the latter "social Darwinism." He has called for the immediate, unconditional withdraw of American troops from Iraq. He has supported social welfare spending legislation approved by the Democratic Party as well as immigration reform that many consider amnesty for illegal aliens. Hill Monitor, a nonpartisan vote tracking group, ranked Obama fourth in frequency of voting with the majority of his party.

Obama's one break from liberal orthodoxy was his cosponsership of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, to provide citizens with a website listing all organizations receiving Federal funds from 2007 onward, and providing breakdowns by the agency allocating the funds, the dollar amount given, and the purpose of the grant or contract. This is meant as a means to control earmarks, also known as pork barrel spending. This could be considered a shrewd political move, since by 2006 the Republicans had earned the blame for out of control pork barrel spending.

There is little evidence to suppose that an Obama Presidency would not be a liberal one, featuring increased social spending and higher taxes at home, and appeasement of America's enemies abroad. The problem is that the current adulation of Obama has little to do with his political views and much to do with his personal charisma.

Obama's main virtue for Democratic voters is that he is not Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has been the inevitable nominee for 2008 for so long that the prospect has started to wear thin for Democrats. Democrats love Bill Clinton, but they do not love his tendency to triangulate, to compromise with Republicans, in short, to sacrifice liberal principles for political expediency. They are justly afraid that they will get more of the same in a Hillary Clinton Presidency. Many Democrats prefer their liberal politics unsullied with the stench of compromise or even common sense. Barack Obama may just be the person to give that to them.

So, if one is Hillary Clinton, what is to be done about Barack Obama? The obvious answer is to unleash the well oiled, Clinton attack machine to take Obama down. If dirt cannot be found, dirt can be manufactured. This risks alienating the African American community, but Hillary might calculate that this usually reliable Democratic constituency will return during the general election, even if the Republican candidate manages to acquire Condi Rice as a running mate. At the very least, Hillary might offer Obama the Vice Presidency. Then Obama would have a few years as Vice President to build up a resume for a run in 2016, when he will be in his late fifties, a prime age for being President.