Obama In?

Barack Obama announced his candidacy today according to Abc news.  I for one think he has a legitimate chance of becoming president.  His main weakness will be

• His lack of real leadership experience.  Looking at his resume (from wikipedia) it appears that he never served in a upper level management position before.  This might be prove to be a sticking point if the race become Guliani vs. Obama.
• Hillary Clinton.  The primaries might be difficult since Clinton undoubtedly will get a lot of the old special interest money from New York.  Hillary is also a fighter and I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of her political machine.  I can foresee a scenario where Obama is smeared by Clinton in the primaries, then wins the democratic nomination but ends up too weak to win the general election.
• Politics.  I haven’t taken a large amount of time to research Barack’s opinions on major policy issues, but it appears to me that his views range from liberal to extreme liberal.  As the last election is any indication, the country really shares a moderate view on most things.  It might be tough to convince someone from the Midwest that Barack shares their values.
• Scandal?  I for one haven’t heard anything negative regarding his personal life, and my sense is that there is probably something that will emerge as time progresses.  I think its safe to assume everyone has done embarrassing things one time or another.  My take is that republicans are really in a tough place right now politically and they are building a strategy to fight against an Obama/Clinton ticket.  Until then maybe they are going to delay the typical smear campaign.
• Defense.  I don’t have much to say in the this area, but Barack doesn’t have much expertise in areas regarding the military.  I believe he has some policy views in regards to the war in Iraq, but so does Chomsky, and we certainly don’t want Chomsky running the military.
• The idea of the activist ticket.  I think its fair to address the race/gender issue.  Certainly to the general public electing the first woman or black president would be a historical event.  I could see this type of event encouraging a large amount of new voters to show up at the polls.  Barack and Hillary have the uphill battle of recognizing that they may garner votes to be the “first” at something, but they need to reinforce that they are qualified nonetheless.  I for one think this will be a very difficult tightrope.  Good luck to both of them.

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