USA: Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama announces decision to run for President

Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Senator Barack Obama announces his campaign, pledging to bridge the partisan gridlock in Washington, end the war in Iraq and transform American politics as the first black U.S. president. U.S. Senator Barack Obama launched his 2008 White House campaign on Saturday (February 10), outside the old state capital building where Abraham Lincoln began his fight against slavery in 1858. Obama said it was time to "turn the page" to a new politics. "Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation," Obama, 45, told a cheering crowd of supporters in Springfield, Illinois. With a sense of urgency he called on the crowd, who'd braved freezing temperatures to see him, to "shake off our slumber and slough off our fears and make good on the debt we owe to the past and future generations." Obama, a rising party star and the only black U.S. senator, has vaulted quickly into the top tier of a crowded field of Democratic presidential contenders along with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards. But the freshman senator from Illinois has faced questions and doubts about his relative lack of experience, his policy views on a wide range of issues and on whether the United States is ready to elect a black man to the White House. Obama acknowledged the questions about his experience, responding that a fresh perspective could break through Washington gridlock on issues like energy, health care and the Iraq war. He said the last six years under Republican leadership in Washington had led to mounting debts, rising health care costs, economic anxiety and a botched foreign policy and war in Iraq. Obama, an early opponent of the war, has called for a phased withdrawal of troops starting in May. He opposes President George W. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. "America, it's time to start bringing our troops home," he said. Obama's political rise has been astonishingly fast. He gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention before he was even elected to the U.S. Senate, and he has authored two best-selling books and appeared on numerous magazine covers. The son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and served eight years in the Illinois Legislature in Springfield before going to Washington. Obama will follow up his announcement with a three-day campaign swing to the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire and his hometown of Chicago.

ITN Source | February 11, 2007

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