The big question about Barack Obama

That's Barack Obama's political résumé. Is it enough to qualify him to be president?
Sure, says Carol Hood, Democratic Party chairman in Calhoun County, Iowa. "Anymore, that might be a good factor," she says. "He doesn't have a lot of people he owes things to."
Probably not, says Matt Pearson, Democratic Party chairman in Buena Vista County, Iowa. "He could use a little more experience," he says. "A lot of the people I know say they really like him, but just don't think it's his time yet."
Obama said Tuesday that this could be his time to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama, 45, said in a statement released as he created a presidential exploratory committee. "But as I've spoken to many of you in my travels … I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."
Obama's personal story, eloquence and hopeful approach to politics have made the only black in the U.S. Senate a top prospective 2008 candidate. When a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll asked Democrats and independents who lean toward Democratic candidates to choose among 15 presidential prospects last weekend, 18% said they would be most likely to support Obama. He ranked second to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the choice of 29%, and ahead of Al Gore, the 2000 presidential nominee; John Kerry, the 2004 nominee; and Kerry's running mate, John Edwards.
Edwards was a presidential candidate before he became Kerry's running mate in 2004. During his campaign, Edwards, who served one Senate term, also faced the experience issue.
"Of course" Obama will have to answer similar questions, Edwards told USA TODAY in December. "Just as I did and will, and as anybody else who wants to be president of the United States will have to do," Edwards said. "The test applies to all of us."
Obama wouldn't be the youngest presidential nominee or chief executive. William Jennings Bryan was 36 when he first became a Democratic nominee. John F. Kennedy was 43 when he was elected. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he was sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley.
Nor would Obama be the least experienced nominee or president. Wendell Wilkie had never been elected to any office before he became the Republican presidential nominee in 1940. Woodrow Wilson had been New Jersey's governor for two years when he was elected in 1912. George W. Bush served six years as Texas governor before being elected president.
Still, some Democrats say they need a more seasoned nominee who's prepared to tackle foreign policy issues such as the war in Iraq and dangerous relationships with Iran and North Korea.
Obama's inexperience is "the big question mark" about his candidacy, says Rep. Beth Arsenault, a Democrat who was just elected to the New Hampshire Legislature.
"It's not a deal-stopper necessarily," she says, "but two years in the Senate? It's not a lot."
The campaign crucible
David Axelrod, Obama's political strategist, says presidential campaigns aren't ultimately about candidates' job histories.
"Campaigns themselves are a gantlet in which you get tested," he says. "People get to see how you handle pressure and how you react to complicated questions. It's an imperfect and sometimes maddening system, but at the end of the day it works, because you have to be tough and smart and skilled to survive that process."
Some legislators who worked with Obama in the Illinois Senate say he proved he can overcome gaps in experience with his ability to quickly grasp complicated issues.
Republican Sen. Kirk Dillard, who took office in 1993, says he gravitated to Obama when the rookie arrived in Springfield in 1997.
"Sen. Obama was someone who I thought — and I was right — could tackle extremely complex things like ethics reform, the death penalty or racial profiling by law enforcement," Dillard says.
Obama was "a full partner" in drafting and passing the state's first major ethics law in 25 years, Dillard says. Obama also helped pass laws requiring that police interrogations and confessions in capital cases be videotaped and creating a state earned-income tax credit.
Such successes are rare, "especially in a rough-and-tumble place driven by seniority like Illinois is," he says.
State Sen. Donne Trotter, a Democrat, says Obama is "a quick read, a quick study."
Obama's tenure as a constitutional lawyer, he says, "prepares him to learn the intricacies and nuances of what the federal government is all about."
Trotter watched the newcomer research a universal health care system, educate other senators and become the architect of the legislation. Obama "is a reader, a learner of different approaches and philosophies," he says. "He has the brainpower to absorb the facts … and make good decisions."
'Managed to get it right on Iraq'
Obama has proved that, Axelrod says, with one decision that sets him apart from other possible Democratic presidential candidates, including Clinton: His opposition from the start to the war in Iraq. "However many gray hairs he has, he managed to get it right on Iraq," Axelrod told Chicago's WTTW-TV last week.
Experience doesn't guarantee success in the White House, historians and political scientists say.
Lyndon Johnson had a long career in Congress before becoming president, but history considers his White House record mixed because of the Vietnam War, says Dean Spiliotes, a political scientist at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Phil Gramm was a veteran senator and Lamar Alexander a former governor and Cabinet member when they ran for president in 1996, but neither won the Republican nomination, he notes.
"What really matters is your temperament and your ability to make good decisions," Spiliotes says. Voters, he says, "make their decision at a very intuitive, gut level. … They have a mental checklist of what a president looks like, sounds like and acts like."
Richard Norton Smith, a historian who has run several presidential libraries and museums, says it would be better "for Obama's sake, not to mention for the country's" if he had more experience. It would also be better if the campaign season were long enough for voters to fully gauge his character and aptitude for the presidency, Smith says.
As Obama's supporters often point out, Lincoln was a former member of the Illinois Legislature who had served briefly in Congress before becoming president. But the parallels in the men's careers are no indication of success for Obama, Smith says. Sometimes the election of inexperienced candidates whose charisma is their greatest asset "produced great presidents, and sometimes it produced decidedly mediocre ones," he says.
Nicole Schilling, chairman of the Democratic Party in Greene County, Iowa, says Obama's lack of a long political record will work to his advantage. "Some people are saying he's young, he needs to wait," she says. "I think it's going to work to his advantage here. … He's kind of a blank slate, and people are projecting what they think onto him."
'Not your Mayflower Americans'
Obama's experience is broader than his time in elected office. He was a community organizer in Chicago and led voter-registration drives. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He lived for a time in Indonesia, a Muslim country. He has traveled to the Middle East, Africa and Iraq.
"He has lived abroad and has relatives who are certainly not your Mayflower Americans and understands different cultures," Dillard says. "Many presidents with foreign-policy experience have not lived firsthand the type of life that Barack has."
None of the Democratic activists interviewed about Obama's chances suggested that his ethnicity matters, and the fact that he is black has not been a dominant factor in his campaigns.
In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote that "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America" and said it's not always easy for black politicians "to gauge the right tone to take — Too angry? Not angry enough? — when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents."
Obama's rawness has sometimes been evident since he went to Washington.
Last year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent Obama a biting letter accusing the Illinois senator of playing partisan politics in wrangling over an overhaul of ethics rules. "I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions," McCain, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2008, wrote to Obama. The two later reconciled.
At a town meeting last year in Wheeling, Ill., Obama was asked by a youngster what he would do if someone gave him $1 billion. First, Obama said he'd pay off his mortgage and give the rest to his wife. He thought a moment and revised his reply, adding that he'd give "most of it" to charity. Then he said he'd put "several hundred million into buying mosquito nets" to prevent malaria in Africa.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote about his ambition. He describes his failed 2000 campaign for Congress as a consequence of "restlessness." He described feeling "envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed, moving into higher offices, getting more things done."
Obama also wrote about his distaste for "the meaner tasks" of politics: "the begging for money, the long drives home after the banquet had run two hours longer than scheduled, the bad food and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife … who was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities."
Last fall, Obama sounded like a man planning to run for president in an interview with Men's Vogue. "My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don't want to just be the president," he said. "You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president."
Mell Brooks, Democratic chairman in Littleton, N.H., says he thinks Obama can achieve that goal despite his inexperience.
"No doubt 20 years' experience is better than 10," he says." For some individuals, it might well be a drawback, but it depends on the intellect, the knowledge and the ability of the candidate," he says. "For Obama, inexperience is not a big drawback."