Like that other right-leaning uber-strategist Frank Luntz, Dick Morris sees potential in an Obama candidacy… I know, I know…

Barack Obama can be whatever he wants to be

American politics alternates between periods in which we welcome partisan debate and those in which we demand consensus and conclusion. Confronted by new issues we turn to the left and to the right and ask each side to develop its ideas and flesh out its alternative for our consideration. During these times, moderates and synthesizers are doomed to defeat since they seem to ignore the problem, while polarizing figures take over. But once the debate has run its course, we make our collective national decisions and are no longer in the mood for unending debate. We want our will to be done by our elected officials with no more quarreling or sniping.

Obama has the opportunity to embody the emerging consensus, a broad national agreement reached from observation of trial and error over the past half decade. The bloody futility of our efforts to build a nation in Iraq have left us still committed to aggressive efforts to hunt down terrorists but determined to extricate ourselves from the mire. The effectiveness of our homeland security efforts and our concomitant horror at instances of mistaken imprisonment and unnecessarily intrusive government investigations have led us to demand a balance between aggressive investigation and protection of civil liberties. We want terrorists caught, interrogated, and locked up, but not tortured or sadistically humiliated.

Obama’s book reflects an intuitive grasp of this emerging consensus even if his voting record does not signal his agreement with it.

Obama winning the T-shirt primary

ON ONE T-SHIRT, he’s just a disembodied head.

On another, he’s a garishly colored four-pane Andy Warhol-esque piece of pop art.

On yet others, he’s referred to by name: “mama says vote for obama,” “OBAMA IS MY HOMEBOY” and the even more straightforward “OBAMA08″ and “BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT.”

It’s hard to believe that the nation is two years and nine days from inaugurating a new president. It’s even harder to believe that Barack Obama hasn’t even declared his candidacy.

Because in the world of political fashion, Barack Obama, the untested United States senator from Illinois, is a hit. A big hit. That is, if the 200,000 Obama products currently for sale through Foster City-based CafePress.com are any indication.

Call it an extension of the political blogosphere, an environment that’s given everyone a pulpit from which to preach. For at places like CafePress — where the average Joe Shmoe can electronically open shop in mere minutes and sell T-shirts, buttons, even doggie tees with custom-made designs — political activists are doing the same thing as those bloggers, only with tangible, and wearable, results.

They are, in essence, wearable blogs.

State to flirt with date for Obama

As U.S. Sen. Barack Obama mulls a presidential bid, his home state looks ready to try to give his potential candidacy a boost.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) said Wednesday he wants to help Obama by moving Illinois’ 2008 presidential primary to Feb. 5 from March 18. A landslide win by Obama could help him raise campaign cash and give him political momentum heading into later contests.

Illinois would join a slew of states eyeing Feb. 5 primaries or caucuses. But only four — Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina — would hold presidential contests sooner.

‘’These states are . . . clearly not as representative of America as Illinois would be,'’ Madigan said, adding that the Democratic presidential nomination might be unofficially clinched by Illinois’ current mid-March primary date.