12.11.2006
Obama, Visiting New Hampshire, Offers Flavor of a Campaign That Might Be (NYTimes.com)
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 11, 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H., Dec. 10 — Senator Barack Obama came to New Hampshire for the first time in his life on Sunday, selling a message of hope while proclaiming himself wary of the wave of hype that surrounded his visit.
His visit gave Democrats in two sold-out halls a chance to inspect the man who has emerged as their party’s strongest alternative to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a presidential contender.
“It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling,” Mr. Obama said here late Sunday afternoon.
“I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the last election in New Hampshire represented,” he said, referring to the losses of two incumbent congressmen here in November. “It’s a spirit that says we are looking for something different — we want something new.”
What New Hampshire saw was a first-term senator from Illinois who offered a strong condemnation of the way politics have been conducted in Washington and who positioned himself as someone who could strongly appeal to the more liberal Democrats who tend to dominate primaries. In two speeches and a news conference, Mr. Obama called for universal health care — the issue with which Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, was once closely identified — a battle on global warming and a timed redeployment of troops from Iraq.
But most of all, Mr. Obama — tieless and grinning broadly as he encountered the kind of reception typically afforded a movie star — talked about what he decried as a toxically partisan atmosphere in Washington, clearly signaling a central theme of a presidential campaign by this newcomer to the national political stage.
(More ... New York Times > U.S. > Politics)
Published: December 11, 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H., Dec. 10 — Senator Barack Obama came to New Hampshire for the first time in his life on Sunday, selling a message of hope while proclaiming himself wary of the wave of hype that surrounded his visit.
His visit gave Democrats in two sold-out halls a chance to inspect the man who has emerged as their party’s strongest alternative to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a presidential contender.
“It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling,” Mr. Obama said here late Sunday afternoon.
“I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the last election in New Hampshire represented,” he said, referring to the losses of two incumbent congressmen here in November. “It’s a spirit that says we are looking for something different — we want something new.”
What New Hampshire saw was a first-term senator from Illinois who offered a strong condemnation of the way politics have been conducted in Washington and who positioned himself as someone who could strongly appeal to the more liberal Democrats who tend to dominate primaries. In two speeches and a news conference, Mr. Obama called for universal health care — the issue with which Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, was once closely identified — a battle on global warming and a timed redeployment of troops from Iraq.
But most of all, Mr. Obama — tieless and grinning broadly as he encountered the kind of reception typically afforded a movie star — talked about what he decried as a toxically partisan atmosphere in Washington, clearly signaling a central theme of a presidential campaign by this newcomer to the national political stage.
(More ... New York Times > U.S. > Politics)
Labels: 2008 election, New York Times, Obama
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