Baraka Wins! Flawless Victory!  Oh, Barack, nevermind….

He’s smooth enough. He’s smart enough. And goldurnit, people like him.

He’s Barack Obama, and with a freshman Senator’s staid assertiveness the sleeves are being rolled back just a wee bit, or at least the cuff links are off at any rate. It seems that the recent flutter of his admission, to Tim Russert on Meet the Press (Oct 22) that he’s got an eye or two on an ‘08 presidential bid, has the chatterboxes mired in philosophykosis upon the merits and potentiality an Obama dynamic just may very well inject into a Democratic Party that’s been, as of late, well quite plainly NOT dynamic or (insert your favorite adjective for spirited motion here.)

The mumbled subtext here tends to allude to a sense of Obama Overrated; a natural fear for the Democrats given the exponentially disproportionate ratio of Obama’s rapidly accelerating political capital versus what many consider to be his lack of “seasoning, ” if you will in terms of political pedigree. This only seems to beg questions about the role of experience, or perceived experience as related to the circus of political efficacy and one’s ability to, god forbid, understand more than those already wallowing in the pen.

Who Cares? Obama’s flame is burning stellar hot right at the present and now is as good as later before the dim sets upon him – his summit bid is still challenged by the Hillary machina; and it will be interesting to see how his groundwork from now onward can effectively parry Hillary’s domination of the middle left; territory he stalks rather well himself during his time on The Hill.

But the middle won’t be the exclusive terrain of glorydom. Obama has the penchant for championing an ideal even though he got the smackdown in a 2000 race for 1st Congressional district against Bobby Rush in Illinois. The lessons of those days were hard for him to learn, the dynamic zeal was no ally then, succumbing to the combine whirl of political machinery that lops off idealism at the neck cutting and spewing it out in tatters difficult to mend.

But that was then. Obama has mended and adapted, waited and watched. His Senate tenure has been defined a little more closely by the old school partyliner rulebook. The rulebook that, unwittingly, defines the invisible caveat of its own demise. The rules are simple: Play along and you’ll be Fine. And so one plays and plays and plays until it’s out of the sandbox and into the nursing home, decades of fighting
the bullies and wiping dirt from the eyes unable to remember what one entered Thunderdome for in the first place. Learn the rules fast, though, and you have a chance to inflict them upon their creators.

Obama is smart enough it seems, but can he take his message to the people? It will be interesting to see what evolves. Obama knows the rules better than most.  And now it is his time to drive the machine.