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Obama Forms Presidential Exploratory Committee

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; 2:40 PM

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D), one of the Democratic Party's brightest young stars, jumped into the 2008 race for the White House today, establishing a presidential exploratory committee that is expected to lead immediately into a full-blown campaign for president.

Obama has electrified Democratic audiences around the country, generating pressure for him to seek the presidency despite having been elected to the Senate just two years ago. Recent national polls show him challenging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is seen as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
"Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions," Obama wrote in an e-mail message to supporters released this morning. "And that's what we have to change first. We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans."

Obama said he would spend the next several weeks in conversation with people around the country. He said he would make a formal announcement of his plans on Feb. 10 in Chicago.

Obama has been a longtime opponent of the Iraq war, a position that puts him at odds with Clinton. Obama addressed an antiwar demonstration in October 2002, declaring his opposition to the war. Clinton voted for a resolution authorizing Bush to go to war, although she said recently that she would not have voted for it if she knew then what she knows now.

Clinton is expected to announce her intentions before the end of the month, and all signs point to her becoming a candidate.

Obama and Clinton are seen as the two stars in the Democratic field, but they will have plenty of competition for the nomination. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who announced in late December, has solid support in Iowa and has been challenging Clinton and other Democrats over the war, calling on them to oppose funding for the president's new proposal to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

Others either in the race or expected to join include former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio). Former vice president Al Gore also is a potential candidate, as is Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the party's 2004 presidential nominee.

"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama told his supporters. "But as I've spoken to many of you in my travels across the states these past months; as I've read your e-mails and read your letters; I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."

Yet, he said, decisions made in Washington over the past six years, as well as problems ignored, "have put out country in a precarious place." He cited economic insecurities and dependence on foreign oil, as well as "a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged."

The 45-year-old Obama burst onto the national scene when he delivered a well-received keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His new book, "The Audacity of Hope," topped the bestseller list for several weeks this fall. But until only a few months ago, the prospect of his becoming a presidential candidate in 2008 seemed remote.

Obama long had dismissed talk that he might seek the presidency, but then signaled his interest in running during an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press" in October. That was quickly followed by a trip in early December to New Hampshire, where Obama drew large and enthusiastic crowds, with many in the audiences encouraging him to run. Since then, he and his advisers have been assembling staff and making arrangements for a campaign.

The Illinois senator has presented himself as someone who could break the partisan polarization that has gripped Washington for a decade. He also has portrayed himself as representing a new generation unencumbered by the battles that have consumed politicians in the Baby Boom generation, best represented by President Bush, Sen. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

He has sought a mantle as a reformist and is expected to offer several proposals to ethics legislation that will be taken up in the Senate this week.

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. His father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas. His father returned to Kenya when Obama was 2. Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he was first African American elected as president of the law review by the publication's editors.

He worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side and was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996. He served eight years there before running for the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was the surprise winner of the Democratic primary that year and got a break shortly after the primary when the Republican nominee withdrew from the race because of a scandal.

Republicans then chose as their nominee Alan Keyes, who had sought the GOP presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000 but who lived in Maryland. Obama won easily.