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While the country gears up for the midterm national
and local elections, the season for the race to the US presidency in
2008 also began.
The Democratic Party, perhaps one
of the oldest political parties in the world whose origin can be
traced back as early as 1792, is pitting two exciting figures in its
election primary, senators Barack Hussein Obama Jr. of Illinois and
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton of New York.
Either of them winning the party
nomination and eventually the US presidency would make a first in
that country’s history.
Obama may yet become the first
black president of his country and now at the age of 45 could be the
second youngest after assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
Clinton, on the other hand, could be the first woman president of
the US, the first former First Lady to become one, and the first
woman to be nominated to the presidency by a major political party.
Obama was born in Hawaii. He is
only the fifth African American senator in US history and the only
one of such breed serving at the US Senate at present. His father, a
Kenyan, died in a car accident when he was twenty-one years old. His
mother Ann Dunham of Kansas, who divorced Obama Sr. when he was 2
years old, remarried an Indonesian and died of cancer in 1995
several months after he published his book, Dreams from My Father.
He has written other books one of which is about his political
convictions entitled: The Audacity of Hope that remained in The New
York Times list of best sellers since its publication in 2006.
Four years of Obama’s childhood
were spent in Indonesia attending Catholic and Muslim schools. He
graduated magna cum laude at the Harvard Law School and first gained
national recognition when he was elected as the first African
American president of Harvard Law Review, the oldest operating
student-edited law review in America. After becoming a lawyer, he
briefly became active in a voters’ registration drive, worked for
a civil-rights law firm, and taught constitutional law in Chicago
until his election as senator in 2004.
They say that many Americans are
drawn by Obama’s everyman image and broad appeal because in his
own words “people project their hopes on him.”
Clinton, as everyone knows, is
the wife of former US President Bill Clinton, who involved herself
in policy making primarily on health care during her husband’s
tenure, departing from the traditional role played by First Ladies.
When she won a Senate seat in 2000, Clinton became the First Lady to
seek public office and became the first woman senator of New York.
Clinton was born in Chicago. As a
student, Clinton had already shown her academic brilliance, her
mettle as a student leader, and her passion for political life and
causes. Like her husband, she graduated from the Yale Law
School where she served on the Board of Editors of Yale Review of
Law and Social Action.
In 1996 Clinton authored a book
entitled: It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us
that became a best-seller. Her 2003 memoir Living History sold more
than one million copies in the first month following publication. In
the latter book, she explained that love is the reason why she chose
to stay with Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
Magazines Time and Forbes had
placed Clinton as among the most powerful figure in today’s world.
Just like the drama of world
tennis championship, Obama and Clinton unfortunately will not battle
it out in the finals because they will have to knock each other out
early on.
Wanted: Obamas and Clintons in
Philippine politics.
(www.soriano-ph.com.)
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