U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who recently said he is contemplating a 2008 run for the White House, will be in Denver today for a book signing.
With no Democrat a clear front-runner, the Illinois Democrat has generated a groundswell of interest for a run at the presidency. This despite the fact that newcomer Obama hasn’t yet served two years in Washington.
Obama is signing his new book “The Audacity of Hope” at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Lodo at noon, followed by campaign stops for Ed Perl- mutter in the 7th Congressional District race and for Amendment 42, which would raise the state’s minimum wage.
On Sunday, Obama told NBC’s “Meet The Press” moderator, Tim Russert, that he’d “sit down and consider” a presidential run after Nov. 7, which was taken as the closest he’s come to a public announcement.
Obama’s greatest claim to fame thus far was a rousing, passionate speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention two years ago.
In a telephone interview, he called the war in Iraq “a mess.”
If he were president, he would “begin a phased withdrawal,” he said.
He also chastised President Bush for not being willing to talk one-on-one with North Korea. “The notion of not talking with our enemies is wrong,” he said. “At the height of our problems with the Soviet Union, we had a direct telephone line to the Kremlin.”
His book, the second he has written, is aimed at reducing the partisanship and polarization that has gripped national politics the past six years.
“The topic was the tendency all of us have to lose hope and turn on each other,” he said.
Obama, 45, a Harvard-educated lawyer who is married with two young daughters, uses the book to search for “common values” the country can agree on.
“These common values transcend politics,” he said. “Yet Republicans and Democrats blame each other. We should be coming together to make these exist.”
