Obama makes it official
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Illinois Sen. Barack Obama formally announced his presidential candidacy Saturday with an invocation of Abraham Lincoln and a call to end the war in Iraq and what he called “the smallness of our politics” that perpetuates so many of the problems the nation faces.
In a lyrical speech that recalled his soaring remarks to the 2004 Democratic National Convention – the address that launched his political rocket – Obama sought to set himself apart not just from the rest of the Democratic field, but the Washington, D.C., establishment he recently joined.
He mentioned a number of challenges the country is facing: “A war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren’t learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We’ve heard them. We’ve talked about them for years. What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans.”
Rather, he suggested, the problems stem from something larger:
“The failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.”
Obama delivered his remarks before the Old State Capitol on a morning of biting cold. Thousands of people braved single-digit temperatures to be part of a day tinged with history; whatever the outcome of the 2008 campaign, Obama already is regarded as the most formidable black candidate ever to seek the White House.
The site chosen for his announcement was rich in symbolism. Lincoln served as a state representative in the Old Capitol and, during an 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas, delivered his famous anti-slavery speech quoting from the Bible and stating “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Obama cited those remarks and invoked Lincoln at several other points in his speech.
“Through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people,” Obama said. “It is because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we are no longer divided, North and South, slave and free. It is because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people – as Americans.”