Rupert Cornwell: Out of America

Youth and hope: could Obama be the new RFK?

On a day off last week I indulged in the sinful luxury of going to a movie in the afternoon. I chose Bobby, directed by Emilio Estevez, dealing with the terrible day in June 1968 when Robert Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after celebrating victory in the California primary. The film looks at the event through the lens of campaign supporters, hotel guests and staff going about their business in the 24 hours before the murder. In all honesty, I didn't think it was that great. But throughout, I couldn't stop thinking about a potential presidential candidate for 2008 - Barack Obama.

Not that I think Mr Obama will be killed if he runs - though for a man bidding to be the first black President of the US, the risk obviously exists. That, indeed, was one reason Colin Powell decided not take the plunge in 1995.

After the second Kennedy assassination, candidates were given secret service protection. But that didn't prevent a deranged gunman shooting George Wallace four years later. Political assassinations and attempted assassinations happen in America, alas, and given the number of guns in the country, another is probably statistically overdue. What struck me was what these two Democratic politicians meant to their followers, symbolising hope and change in troubled times.

I first wrote in this space about Mr Obama six months ago. Then he was just a gleam in pundits' eyes: a first-term Senator with a gentle but dazzling smile, a deft way with words (both spoken and written) and a Kennedyesque glamour - but with only two years' experience of national politics. A heck of a lot has happened since then. With every hint that he might run, Obama-mania grows among Democrats. When he paid a visit last weekend to New Hampshire, it might have been the second coming, even though he was officially only attending a celebration of the party's midterm sweep in the state that - co-incidence, co-incidence - hosts the first presidential primary. Almost 2,000 people turned out, more than go to a winner's victory rally after the real primary.

This sort of thing hasn't happened since RFK and American involvement in another desperately unpopular foreign war. Hardened Democratic pols are letting their hearts rule their heads. Hillary Clinton can't win, but Mr Obama can, they have convinced themselves - even though he has dispensed mainly platitudes thus far. America wants a healer, not a warrior - and this seemingly race-blind African-American, emanating sweet reason and a Powell-like ability to make white America feel good about itself, is perfect for the part. His very inexperience helps. He is a blank sheet upon which people can write their dreams, sure of no tiresome reality to contradict them.

Will he actually take the plunge? All I know is that six months ago, he was just a tantalising "what-if", in the most open presidential season in decades, where an unpopular war (which he all along opposed, by the way) is a wild-card capable of upsetting every calculation, exactly as Vietnam did in 1968, providing the opening for RFK. Given the clamour now for Mr Obama to run, I can't see how he can't.

You don't flirt with voters in New Hampshire - you don't go on national television in the primetime Monday night football slot to come up with teasers like "Tonight, I'd like to put all the doubts to rest. I'd like to announce to my hometown of Chicago and all of America, that I am ready for... the [Chicago] Bears to go all the way" - unless you're going to do it. More seriously, his wife seems up for it, unlike Alma Powell when her husband faced a similar decision.

Mr Obama calls the hype and the adoration "baffling". But he clearly loves it. And having allowed expectations to run so high, his passionate supporters would never forgive him if he led them so blatantly down the aisle, only to abandon them at the altar.

Never again will he have this fresh and youthful bloom. Four years, eight years down the line, someone else may well have come along, fresher and more youthful than he. Mr Obama is proof again of the astonishing openness and unpredictability that makes American presidential politics so exciting - and so alarming. Anyone can come through to lead the world's most powerful country, be it a Texan ignoramus with a famous name who hasn't a clue about foreign affairs, or a charismatic 45-year-old who two years ago was pushing pens in the Illinois state legislature in Springfield.

Whether he will win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, nobody can say. Hillary is worried about him, but less than other candidates who will be starved of money and media coverage if the race quickly turns into a Clinton-Obama battle. But Mr Obama has yet to face the white heat of scrutiny of a real candidate, which will expose even the smallest sins. I only pray it doesn't all end as it did for Robert Kennedy.