I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream "Barack for President"

As expected, the two book signings Sen. Barack Obama held earlier this week for his new work, The Audacity of Hope, were nothing short of insanity, with people circling around street corners at 57th Street Books in Hyde Park and forming lines six hours in advance at Borders on Michigan Ave.

Obama is clearly a Ba-“Rack Star” in the city, and across the nation, with a number of people, including Oprah, hoping for he’ll run for president in 2008. While Obama hasn’t made any mention of candidacy, the media is also latched onto the story.

Time magazine’s recent issue devoted the cover story to our favorite son of a goat herder, running the headline, "Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President."

Obama has been pussyfooting around questions about a possible bid, instead focusing on drumming up support for Democratic midterm election candidates across the country. However, he issued a vague, yet hopeful, statement when asked if he would think about presidency after the November elections:

“When the election is over and my book tour is done, I will think about how I can be most useful to the country and how I can reconcile that with being a good dad and a good husband. … I haven't completely decided or unraveled that puzzle yet."

Considering that when we saw Barack at a rather professional function our reaction was squealing and jumping up and down, we’re just as crazy about him as most Americans. Chicagoist would love to see him make a bid for the nation’s top seat, as we truly believe he could be a uniter and not a divider (unlike, say, some other folks who have made such a claim). Being realists, however, we imagine much of this talk is just that — talk. We figure the Democrats have a pretty strong chance of winning the ’08 race barring any inexcusable blunders in the next two years, anyway. Barack is indeed a hot commodity, one that Democrats will most likely hold onto for a few years so that he can add some experience to back up his popularity, and so that Democrats can all but guarantee a decade of progressive commanders in chief.