Has Obama decided to run in 2008?

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post discusses indications that Sen. Barack Obama may be planning a presidential run in 2008. Specifically, he's brought in two Democratic consultants with experience in national races: Anita Dunn and Minyon Moore:

Dunn served as a senior adviser to Bill Bradley in 2000 and is playing a similar role for Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh as he weighs a run for president in 2008. Moore was involved in Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential race, served in the Clinton White House and led minority outreach for John Kerry's presidential bid in 2004.

Political insiders will continue to wonder about Obama's plans given the incredibly active travel and fundraising schedule he's maintaining. Obama has already visited 21 states to raise money for Senate candidates and raised better than $1.5 million into Hopefund in the first four months of the year.

My two cents: Obama is a good looking, well spoken man, who can speak off the cuff on a variety of issues and sounds like a moderate. He's been the recipient of a lot of good press and the incredible luck to have run against Alan Keyes. People I know who know Obama speak of him and his wife in glowing terms.

Obama's 2004 keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention introduced the man to the American public, and they liked what they saw and heard. The speech generated the first chatter about him as a possible presidential candidate. But he's always hemmed and hawed about the subject of a presidential run and insisted that as a freshman senator, his job is to learn the ins and outs and so on. It's this aura of humility that makes him all the more appealing to voters.

I believe that the instant the electorate get the idea that this guy is actually taking steps to run, the bloom is off the rose. It's at this point that the conventional wisdom switches from "Gee, that Barack Obama guy might make a good president some day" to "Gee, look who's gotten a swelled head."

In other words, Obama stops being a dream candidate in the public's eye as soon as he says he wants to be a candidate. I think this will be the case in 2008, at least.

I'm not one who thinks that Hillary Clinton has the Democratic nomination in her pocket. Still, the presidential nominees of both parties have for the past several election cycles been those candidates whom candidate conventional wisdom has said would win because of support from their party's movers and shakers (good thing we have primary elections, huh?). Still, if Obama is serious about seeking the White House, he might want to wait and prove he can win a tough statewide election, and then mount a run in 2012 or 2016, when he really can claim to be a seasoned candidate.

It's going to be hard to resist running. Obama was a first-hand witness to and beneficiary of the Illinois GOP's self-destruction brought about by decades of pinstripe corruption, which culminated in corrupt George Ryan administration. President Bush and a handful of GOP greed- and ego-heads seemed determine to bring down the Republicans on a national level. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP is going to loose control of one or both chambers of Congress this year and probably the White House. Obama wants to be in place when that happens, much as he was in 2004.

Hat tip: Bill Baar's West Side and Illinoize.

Cross posted at Peoria Pundit.