Barack Obama Jumps Into 2008 Race

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday took the initial step in a presidential bid that could make him the nation's first black to occupy the White House.

Obama filed paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee. He first announced the decision on his Web site, www.barackobama.com.

Obama said on his Web site that he will spend a few weeks "exploring" with his committee, then announce his decision on running for president on Feb. 10 in Illinois, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss.

When the world learns whether Obama will enter the race, his announcement will likely come in a historic city.

Several Obama supporters are being told it will happen in Springfield, Illinois, the hometown of President Lincoln. The day Obama picked, February tenth, is just two days before Lincoln's birthday.

"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama said in a video posting. "I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics. So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need."

Obama, a 45-year-old a little more than two years into his Senate term, is the most inexperienced candidate considering a run for the Democratic nomination. He rose quickly to national prominence, beginning with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his election to the Senate that year, but is still an unknown quantity to many voters.

Two best-selling autobiographies — "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" and "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" — have helped fill in the gaps but have still only touched a fraction of the public.

Nonetheless, he ranks as a top contender. His appeal on the stump, his unique background, his opposition to the Iraq war and the fact that he is a fresh face set him apart in a competitive race that also is expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Obama's advisers say he's not running as an alternative to anybody, but some Democrats call him the anti-Hillary, CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports. Polls show she's a lightening rod, and Obama is well-liked. But one problem for Obama is that he has few national security credentials beyond a couple of years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Other Democrats who have announced a campaign or exploratory committee are 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Both Obama and Clinton have hired senior aides while courting potential supporters in Iowa, New Hampshire and other key states.

Iowa's caucuses will kick off the nominating campaign in January 2008, to be followed by caucuses in Nevada and primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The moves by the two came as Dodd launched his campaign last week and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson prepared to make an announcement before the end of the month.

Obama and Clinton would clearly be the Democratic field's heavyweights — one vying to be the nation's first black president, the other the country's first female chief executive.

Obama's announcement Tuesday was comparatively low-key, banking on the hype building up to his decision to drive the buzz rather than a speech or high-profile media appearance. He was in Washington on Tuesday but did not plan any public appearances.

Obama tried to turn his biggest weakness — his lack of experience in national politics — into an asset by criticizing the work of those who have been in power.

"The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place," he said.

"America's faced big problems before," he said. "But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions."

He said Americans are struggling financially, dependence on foreign oil threatens the environment and national security and "we're still mired in a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged."

Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961 in Honolulu, where his parents met while studying at the University of Hawaii. His father was black and from Kenya; his mother, white and from Wichita, Kan.

Obama's parents divorced when he was 2 and his father returned to Kenya. His mother later married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. He settled in Chicago, where he joined a law firm and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago's Law School. He also helped local churches establish job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods and organized a major voter registration drive in the 1992 election.

While working at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin in the summer of 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm. They married in 1992 and have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building Democrat who was strongly liberal on social and economic issues. He backed gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care and tax breaks for the poor, but set himself apart from others by working with opponents to resolve policy disagreements and refusing to become a rubber stamp for his allies.

The retirement of Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois in 2004 drew a raft of candidates to the Democratic primary, but Obama easily outdistanced his competitors. He was virtually assured of victory in the general election when the designated Republican candidate was forced from the race by scandal late in the election. His GOP replacement — conservative gadfly Alan Keyes, who is also black — garnered less than 30 percent of the vote.

Obama insisted during the 2004 campaign and through his first year in the Senate that he had no intention of running for president, but by late 2006 his public statements had begun to leave open that possibility.

Last month, he traveled to New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state, and drew rock-star size crowds to a speech and book signing.

The biggest question is whether the United States is ready for an African-American president,Borger reports.

Former NAACP chairman Kweisi Mfume says it might be.

"I think that the only way you find out is that you go and you present yourself and you offer yourself up," he said. "This is not the America it was 20 years ago or 40 years ago."