Is He The New Face of The Democratic Party? as seen Four Years Ago in the Columbia College Today

Barack Obama ’83 was sworn in this month as the sole African American in the U.S. Senate, and only the fifth in history. He is the highest-ranking African-American elected official in the United States.

But that’s not all he is being celebrated for. After delivering an eloquent, energizing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last July, Obama became a national figure whom some are calling the future of the Democratic Party. Politicians from both sides of the aisle acknowledge that he has a natural ability — partly stemming from his biracial and itinerant background — to connect with a range of people, to bring opposing sides together and to move policy forward.

“He’s a rare package of brains, values and personality,” says John Bouman, an advocate who has worked with Obama on policy issues. “What you see is the real deal. It’s a good break for all of us that he chose politics.”

A year ago, Obama was a little-known state senator from Illinois elbowing a half-dozen other candidates for the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. Senate. Few people outside of his home state had any reason to know of, or care about, “the skinny kid with the funny name,” as he likes to describe himself.

Then, last March, he won the nomination, and national press coverage soon followed. Early articles included a feature in The New Yorker, and a long Salon.com essay about him written by his friend, novelist Scott Turow, heralding “The new face of the Democratic Party — and America.”

The Kerry campaign took notice, and tapped Obama to deliver the coveted keynote address at the party’s convention. That really did it: The media wanted to know what was so special about Obama, and when they found out — Obama related his personal story within his convention address, and his message of unity resonated with people across the country — the attention escalated like a skyscraper’s express elevator.

Obama has been described as a one-man melting pot and likes to say, “My name comes from Kenya, and my accent comes from Kansas.”

Television and radio interviews, magazine and newspaper profiles, hundreds of guest appearance invitations and national fan mail followed. Nobody was making quips about his name anymore, except for Obama himself, who continued to relish a joke he tells about how people mistake his name for Alabama or “Yo Mama,” and David Letterman, who featured a Top-10 list of “Ways to Mispronounce Barack Obama.”

Obama became so popular, and so far ahead in the general election polls, that he contributed some of his campaign time and money to boost the cause of fellow Democratic candidates. At 43, with a political career that included only eight years as an Illinois state senator, Obama was catapulted to national stardom and became the new darling of the Democratic Party. : “Here’s a guy who hasn’t served a day in the Senate, and I just saw an ‘Obama ’08’ [for President] button,” says David Axelrod, Obama’s friend and media consultant. “It’s out of control.”(continue at http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jan05/cover.php)

WELL, MR AXELRØD, guess it was just all part of the plan years ago, eh?

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