I thought the movie Head of State potrayed by Chris Rock was just a fluke of the gun, taking a mockery at the American Presidential Election and it’s system. Then today, I read about Senator Barrack OBAMA was hot on the heals to be a Presidential Candidate. Then what about Hillary Clinton? I don’t know cos alot of the electorates are abit …no let me reword it.. absolutely upset with the current Bush Administration. The War on Iraq really set the American Constituents divided and true to what Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided will not stand.

It’s something I don’t want to jinx myself with but don’t I foresee the Arnie the Terminator going about terminating all the terminal diseases of the American People? Taxes, Poverty, Economic downturn?

Let’s just wait and see.

Feed thru CNA:

Obama leaps into 2008 White House race
Posted: 11 February 2007 0122 hrs

Senator Barack Obama

SPRINGFIELD, United States : Senator Barack Obama has launched “an improbable quest” to become America’s first black president, brazenly claiming the mantle of Abraham Lincoln, the US icon who ended slavery.

“I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America,” Obama told thousands of supporters Saturday, shivering in temperatures of minus 11 degrees Celcius (13 Fahrenheit) in Lincoln’s hometown.

“You didn’t come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be,” said Obama, 45, muscling his way into a crowded Democratic field already dominated by Senator Hillary Clinton.

“In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope,” said Obama, whose dazzling rhetoric has some giddy supporters evoking comparisons to political giants like former president John F. Kennedy.

Obama, son of a Kenyan economist and white American mother, also pledged to bring US troops home from Iraq, boost US efforts to combat global warming, and to provide health care to every American.

He spoke on the steps of the red-domed old Illinois statehouse where Lincoln, president from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, famously warned “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“If you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us … if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear … then I’m ready to take up the cause,” Obama said.

In an address also streamed live on the Internet, he echoed the man many Americans consider to be their greatest president saying, “divided we are bound to fail.”

“The life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible, he tells us there is power in words,” said Obama who once referred to himself as “a skinny kid, with a funny name.”

“Beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope.”

Terming his campaign an “improbable quest,” Obama pledged to end the tide of bitter cynicism in US politics after the Iraq war and years of anger between Republicans and Democrats.

But after only two years in Congress, the political phenom admitted some may view his campaign as too much, too soon.

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness — a certain audacity — to this announcement.”

“I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

Adopting the classic “outsider” position of US presidential challengers, Obama said he was not in the race “just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.”

Obama must confound sceptics who warn lofty idealism can be ripped to shreds on the campaign trail.

Also looming is the Clinton election machine, as the former first lady takes her own tilt at history, hoping to become America’s first woman president in a Democratic race she already dominates, according to most polls.

A strong challenge is also forming up from 2004 Democratic vice presidential pick John Edwards.

Obama will this weekend campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, nearly a year before the bellwether states hold early nominating contests for the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets and almost two years before America’s pick the 44th president.

On foreign policy, he vowed to “confront the terrorists with everything we’ve got,” but implicitly criticized President George W. Bush by vowing to rebuild US alliances to do so.

He reminded Americans that, unlike Clinton and Edwards, he had opposed the war in Iraq as a “tragic mistake” — though he was not in the US Senate when the 2003 vote to authorize war was taken.

“It’s time to start bringing our troops home. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war,” he said.

Obama will instantly become the most credible African-American presidential candidate ever to mount a White House campaign, and is seen as having a real shot, in the most open White House race for 80 years.

But he told CBS 60 minutes in an interview to air Sunday: “If I don’t win this race it will be because of other factors — (that) I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go.”

- AFP /ls