But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Obama announces...sort of

Barack Obama announced today that he is forming a presidential exploratory committee. This means that he can start raising money without actually disclosing where the money came from. Once he declares officially he will have to disclose where he got the exploratory money. Although a person running does not have to do this, it is a common step and allows him to see how he might do in an election by doing some polls and giving speeches. Cutting through the jargon - this more or less means that he is going to run. He said that he would make a final announcement on February 10th.

If you want to see his announcement check out his new website.

2 comments:

Lauri said...

So i've been hearing that this might not be a good idea for him to run cuz he lacks experience. What are his "qualifications"?

Jeff said...

The only formal qualifications are being a natural-born citizen and being 35 years old.

However, people have criticize his lack of national government experience (one term in the Senate) and lack of experience dealing with world issues (he was in the Illinois legislature before).

I would remind them that Lincoln was a one-term member of the House before being elected and 3 of our last 4 presidents (Bush II, Clinton, and Reagan) were governors before becoming president so they had little world experience either. I think his ability to use common sense and compromise are his biggest informal qualifications.