Obama may be the underdog against front-runners Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, but with some hard work and a little luck, he will shock the world in 2008 and prove all the skeptics wrong.
From Monroe Anderson of the Chicago Sun-Times:
Not long after Barack Obama lost his bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, I ran into him at a downtown restaurant. I stopped at his table for a quick hello before joining my lunch date. Before I could nod goodbye, Obama told me that he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. I was taken aback. ''From a state senator to a U.S. senator? That's too big a leap,'' I warned.
''It doesn't matter. It's all the same,'' Obama said, summarizing in the shorthand exchange of a chance restaurant encounter that either you're qualified and capable or you're not. Remembering that he'd expressed an interest in running for mayor during another lunch meeting years before, I think I shook my head in disbelief. Time, obviously, has proved Obama right and me wrong.
The short period it took him to go from a relatively unknown Illinois state senator to a relatively unknown political force with rock-star stature could have happened only in these modern times, where the currents of cable network news and the World Wide Web ebb and flow 24/7.
To be sure, Obama won't be running on the African-American platform but, seek it or not, he'll be the African-American presidential candidate. That's fine with me. Every time this brilliant, compassionate man speaks to American citizens will be at once, a lesson in current events now and a history lesson for generations to come. And should he win, believe it or not, black history will become America's history 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days of the year. So I, like millions of other Americans of all races, creeds and national origins, would like to see him become the Jackie Robinson of major league politics in this nation.
Only time will tell if, exactly two years from yesterday, Obama will be front and center at the swearing-in ceremony on Pennsylvania Avenue. I honestly doubt it, but I sincerely hope the Illinois senator will prove me wrong again.
