Obama Barack's My World

Last Friday Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) came to speak at George Mason University. I hadn’t seen the Johnson Center packed with that many people since last year’s hype over the Final Four. The event was made possible because of the collaboration between Students for Barack Obama—a small Facebook group turned nationwide political movement—and Mason’s College Democrats.

In an article from the Broadside, Tobin Van Ostern, deputy director of Students for Barack Obama said that the senator was never scheduled to speak at any other college campus. It’s pretty exciting to know that Mason was selected as the first university for him to make an appearance. Without a doubt, GMU has made history in nationwide politics.

Though nothing has been made official, Obama’s speech was a strong indication that he has intentions of running for president in 2008—and there’s no doubt that he has a strong following. Before Obama’s appearance at the rally, several warm-up speakers shared with the crowd that students from all over the country had come to Mason to hear the Illinois senator speak.

For the most part, Obama kept his speech pretty generalized in the sense that he didn’t get into specifics on certain issues. But that doesn’t mean that what he said wasn’t motivating. The hopeful mentality of Yes We Can—a catchphrase that was repeated several times by Obama and the crowd—was an ongoing theme throughout his speech.

It’s clear that this man is a natural crowd pleaser. In my opinion, the high point of Sen. Obama’s speech happened after he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King in saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

And in his own words, the Illinois senator concluded his speech by saying, “And if you grab that arc, I have absolutely no doubt that regardless of what happens in this presidential year, in this campaign, America will transform itself.”