Posted on 01/14/2007 1:00:06 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
Many Democrats are already eyeing him as perhaps their best hope for the White House in the 2008 presidential election campaign.
Now Barack Obama, the charismatic senator with near rock-star status, has won glowing praise from another, more unlikely source.
Frank Luntz, the communications strategist who has helped mastermind a string of victories for the rival Republican party, has singled him out as the politician whose oratory puts him in pole position for next year's presidential election.
"His whole message is one of hope and opportunity," Mr Luntz told The Sunday Telegraph. "He comes across as a real person, and 'real' is in for 2008."
According to Mr Luntz - whose recognition of David Cameron's appeal was a pivotal moment in the last Conservative leadership contest - Mr Obama's oratory skills contrasts sharply with the Republicans' "pathetic" utterances, which helped to consign them to defeat in November's congressional elections.
In a book published last week, Mr Luntz predicts that the party of Ronald Reagan, who was known as the "Great Communicator", will also lose the White House next year unless its leaders raise their game to challenge fresh voices like that of Mr Obama.
Mr Luntz highlights Sen Obama's inspiring speech to the 2004 Democrat convention - in which he talked of coaching Little League baseball, having gay friends, worshipping God and pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes - as a striking example of his unifying communication skills.
"I was in the hall when he gave that speech and I heard a future president," says Mr Luntz. "Here was the American dream embodied in a young man running for Senate, a new Jack or Bobby Kennedy."
The pollster has a long track record of identifying the phrases that make or break political and corporate campaigns. In 1994, he helped craft the "Contract with America", which paved the way for 12 years of Republican domination of Congress, replacing neutral terms such as "estate tax" with the politically-charged "death tax" in order to stage a vote-winning campaign against it.
So when he makes such observations, American politicians listen. In his book, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, he identifies Mr Obama as the "verbal opposite" of fellow senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democrat 2008 nomination.
"She's all about 'Us versus them', but he's much more a uniter than a divider," he says. "He's the most aspirational presidential candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968."
Mr Obama, who is 45 and has two young daughters, is blessed with the sort of gripping personal story that plays well in US politics: he is the Hawaiian-born son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas and was brought up for four years in Indonesia. He has admitted that he went off the rails as a young man, using cocaine and marijuana, and he still has a little-publicised smoking habit (of tobacco).
Such honesty will play to his advantage, rather than come back to haunt him, Mr Luntz believes. "It shows he's real," he said. "If he can frame his image as an American success story who overcame incredible odds, then that plays very well for him."
His "human" side received further exposure last week when America's best-selling magazine, People, ran a photograph of him emerging from the Pacific in surfer trunks during his recent family holiday in Hawaii.
The "Beach Babes" spread placed him in illustrious company, alongside the likes of Penélope Cruz and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Although Sen Obama feigned embarrassment when asked about the picture, this confirmation that he is still photogenic when less than fully clothed is unlikely to harm his reputation.
Mr Luntz does identify an "Achilles heel" in Mr Obama's CV: he is a youthful politician with no experience of government. The pollster believes such inexperience showed last week when, after Mr Bush's Iraq speech, Mr Obama said, "We're not going to baby-sit a civil war."
Mr Luntz commented: "The image of 'baby-sitting' lacks the gravitas that a conflict that has taken thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, deserves."
But Mr Obama's status as a Capitol Hill neophyte - he has served two years in the Senate - could play well at a time when "Washington" is a dirty word for many Americans.
For now, Mr Obama continues to say that he will decide "soon" whether to join the presidential race. But he gave a hint of how his thoughts were progressing when he attended a black economic summit in New York last week, and said he owed the host, the Rev Jesse Jackson, "a great debt" for paving the way with his White House runs in 1984 and 1988.
Mr Obama is the only black politician seriously considering making a run in 2008.
Oh my goodness. Jack Kennedy? ROFL
What has the guy DONE? Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.
Of course, all that makes him the left's favorite perfumed prince.
He's a muslim...
Kennedy came from Irish Catholic roots. Osama Obama has some mooslime roots (even if it was his stepfather).
Are we just going to hand the fox the keys to the chicken house?
Obama commanded a PT boat in WW2? Who knew?
BS! Staged photo. He didn't have a drop of water on his upper torso.
Jack Kennedy with ears and a tan.
I was watching a special on the History Channel last night that centered on the anti-Christ. The prevailing thought on who the anti-Christ will embody himself will be a popular, attractive man that will initially do great things world wide and then when he has the population under his control, will unleash unspeakable evil. Christ will have to finally intervene, destroy him and then there will be a millenium of Christian based existence.
oH..AND HE WAS SOOOOOO emabarrassed by the photo of him in swim trunks on the cover of a magazine...yeah, right.
Well, in the 50's we had " Camelot ".
Guess this will be " Muzzalot !"
Like spending his elementary school years in a terrorist madrassah? That should go over big.
This guy is The Mohammedan Candidate.
Maybe he's so slick the water just ran off.
The Democrats today ironically are the party of Sirhan Sirhan, not Robert F. Kennedy.
He's biracial unless he's negated his mother's race.
His Kansas born mother, met his Kenyan born father at the University of Hawaii in 1959. The couple lived in Hawaii until Barack was two, when his father left to study at Harvard and returned to Kenya without his family.
If Jack Kennedy lived today, I think he would be a Republican.
Obama is nothing more then a Muslim plant trying his best to deceive us. Now lets see who he fools.
Europe wants another Bill Clinton. Someone who tells people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.
That is simply untrue. He was educated for much of his life in Christian schools? Could you please tell me how that makes him a Muslim?
And besides, your comment reeks of religion-bashing, which is prohibited by the founder of Free Republic.
No further proof is required...
The nation has been dumbed down to a level BELOW the lowest common denominator...
We're seeing why great civilizations fail after a period of time --- the more "civilized" they become the less effective they are in dealing with the destroyers of civilizations.
Folks can rant and rave about a NOBODY, who has accomplished nothing beyond "star status", got elected on the basis of race or a weegee board or who the hell knows why - and has revealed no plan for "improving" the situation..
I would also be interested to learn just how finished Obama is with his original Muslim faith -- and is he willing to CLEARLY AND FIRMLY declare so publicly and to take a position on the war against ISLAMISTS..
Of course - knowing what we know about Islam and the Koran -- Muslims are INSTRUCTED to lie to infidels in order to remain safe or to take advantage.........until strong enough to kill the infidels... On that basis, we would be rational to discount whatever he says on the subject.
How can ANYONE trust ANY Muslim -- who hasn't PROVED worthiness of that trust in some meaningful way?
Personally, given all the recent evidence of Muslim duplicity --- I'm finding it difficult to extend trust....
Semper Fi
That is simply untrue. He was educated for much of his life in Christian schools? Could you please tell me how that makes him a Muslim?
And besides, what are you trying to hint anyway by mentioning someone's religion? I thought Free Republic was above this type of dirty personal attacks.
Hell, EVEN his own brother, fat commie/socialist/pig scum/murderer Ted is not the next Jack Kennedy. I was not aware that Ears was in the Navy and that his P.T. boat got run over by a Japanese destroyer and he survived in the water and pulled his men to safety on an island. Dang, I guess I better read up more on this national hero, Ears Osama Obama Whogivesadamnah.
Barak HUSSEIN Obama? Repubs ought to call him by his full name.
Sounds like your masters, the Lib machine, have you on a short leash. Joined the 4th and pushing the liberal agenda already. Won't work here, might on DU though.
WHAT? How am I a liberal if I am just pointing out a factual error???
Please refrain from using the race card. Your post sounds borderline bigoted.
BTW, thank you for your service.
Check out this blog!
Worth mentioning when it's pertinent.
But I think yours was just a rhetorical question, anyway.
Honestly, what is the matter with attacking Obama's ideology instead of using semi-bigoted personal attacks?
NO. What I said was the TRUTH friend. NOT racist. If you don't believe me, read up on it. The truth hurts sometimes and this is the truth. Check it out before you spout.
No, I know that her father beat her mother. I am just urging you not to bring race into that issue. If Halle Berry wants to be proud of her blackness or her whiteness, that is her business, independently of what either parent did to the other personally.
Rock Star must be part of his name too, that is, aside from Hussein.
So Obama commanded a PT boat during World War II?
(chuckle!) Great minds think alike!
Probably right! The Democrat Party went waaaay to the Left than Kennedy would be a Republican had he lived! He was a fiscal conservative, and a somewhat social liberal. He didn't live long enough to establish any history!
"BS! Staged photo. He didn't have a drop of water on his upper torso."
Did he have any smokes? Not that the media would print such a photo.
"Please refrain from using the race card. Your post sounds borderline bigoted."
Truth hurts, noob. That these two simply ignore thier white ancestry after being raised by white parents and their influences is just a fact.
Results 1 - 10 of about 51,400 for Barack Obama antichrist.
Google :)
Barrack Obama “the new Jack Kennedy”
Does this mean that Barrack Hussein Obama favors tax cuts and supports using our military in war?
To the liberal news media, it is not what you have done but how you LOOK.
Oh! Jack, Jackie, Obama!! .... You all look mahhhvelous!!!
MSM doesn't even try to hide anymore. How many times in the last 2 months have you hear Obama and Rock Star in the same sentence?
I was watching a special on the History Channel last night that centered on the anti-Christ. The prevailing thought on who the anti-Christ will embody himself will be a popular, attractive man that will initially do great things world wide and then when he has the population under his control, will unleash unspeakable evil. Christ will have to finally intervene, destroy him and then there will be a millenium of Christian based existence.
I've been telling who ever would listen to me, that this guy is the anti-Christ! I'm glad someone else is thinking along the same lines as me. Obama is too perfect, slick, vapid. He scares me.
Obama is like John Kennedy? If he becomes that popular I'm sure Hillary will make sure there's a second gunman in the grassy knoll of Barack's future.
Kennedy had been in congress since '47 when he ran for President in 1960. He also had years of experience as an officer in the Navy during WWII. Not 2 frickin' uneventful years as a junior senator. Obama is one of the most UNqualified people to even THINK about running for POTUS.
Wow, so you are simply reiterating the old argument that one should be punished for the sins of his father. Well now, let us think in terms of this logic. Would YOU appreciate it if YOU had a father of a different religion and partook in objectionable actions and someone attacked YOU for adhering to that religion and supporting such objectionable actions? Your post is the very essence of bigotry and prejudice.
Martin Luther King would have been ashamed of the bunk surrounding Obama’s religion and family history.
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