From the way pundits talk about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., you would think he had already been elected president.
The junior senator from Illinois is being referred to as ""the first black president"" and ""the savior of the Democratic Party."" He has gone from an obscure state senator to a vehicle for the hopes and dreams of young idealists. It is a lot of hype to live up to. Too much.
Obama will be 47 years old in 2008, four years older than John F. Kennedy was when he became the youngest elected president in history. Kennedy, though, spent six years in the House of Representatives and eight years in the Senate.
Assuming Obama begins campaigning full time at the start of 2008, he will have had just three years in the Senate.
Put aside the question of electability for a moment and consider the larger question of ability: Is someone who was a state senator just four years earlier qualified to be president of the United States?
It's true, as Obama points out, that no one can really be prepared for a job as massive as the presidency. It's also true that the last president to have so little experience was a one-term Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln. Though he grew into the job eventually, Lincoln's inexperience was responsible for terrible decision-making in the first years of the Civil War.
Obama's appeal right now appears to be charisma and an inspiring life story. But does this necessarily make him more likely to be a good president?
His political experience is paltry compared to the other Democratic presidential contenders. Evan Bayh was a successful two-term governor and now senator. Bill Richardson is a current governor and former cabinet secretary and U.N. ambassador. Joe Biden is the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the party's most articulate spokesman on Iraq. Even Hillary Clinton has a full term in the Senate under her belt, as well as eight years in the White House alongside her husband.
In a fascinating article last month, Time magazine writer Joe Klein found Obama intelligent and thoughtful but with a breadth of expertise no greater than one would expect of a man less than two years removed from the political orbit of Springfield, Ill.
It's worth noting that Obama has never campaigned against a serious Republican opponent. During the 2004 campaign, both his Democratic primary rival and the Republican nominee self-destructed due to scandals, leaving cable-TV host Alan Keyes as his hapless opponent.
No one knows how Obama would react to the glare of a hostile media and the full-scale barrage of the Republican- attack machine. Would he be able to roll with the punches as Bill Clinton did, or would the attacks stick to him like they did to John Kerry?
In addition, Obama hails from Chicago, a city not exactly known for squeaky-clean politics. The administrations of Mayor Richard Daley and Gov. Rod Blagojevich are reeling from corruption scandals.
Even if Obama himself isn't implicated, the press could easily find some connection between him and the Chicago machine, and the furor could damage both his personal reputation and the Democratic Party's electoral fortunes.
The risk of nominating Obama will be even greater if U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is the Republican nominee. The combat veteran with decades of experience could make the neophyte with half a Senate term look like a novice. Or worse yet, McCain could deliver a rhetorical knockout on the order of Lloyd Bentsen's infamous putdown of Dan Quayle, ""Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.""
Maybe voters will choose youth over experience, as they did in 1992 with Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush. But it's a dangerous gamble for the Democrats to make with the White House in the balance.
The stars may align yet for Obama in 2008. It's hard, though, to shake the worry that he's jumping the gun.
Perhaps he could still follow the Clinton path and emerge from obscurity to win the presidency. Or, like Quayle and John Edwards before him, Barack Obama could derail a promising political career by taking the plunge too soon.
