We worship an awesome God in the blue states

"Yesterday, at about 9 am, you may have heard something. [cue choir of angels singing] That can mean only one thing: Barack Obama did something." --Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (Caitlin, I may have made this up in my head but I think I heard you laughing at one point!)

This week, Barack Obama announced that he is forming a "presidential exploratory committee" and will make his final announcement about running for president on February 10 (hence The Daily Show's "countdown to Obamania!"). With any luck, February 11 is when I will make my first contribution to Obama's campaign.

But if you, like my friend Hannah, have never heard of Barack Obama (!) and upon hearing his name assume that he is a terrorist (!!), here are five reasons why you should consider supporting him:

1. Let's get the superficial one out of the way right now: Politically, he is a hottie. Aside from the fact that his ears stick out disturbingly like George W. Bush's, he will undeniably be the most attractive president to occupy the White House since John F. Kennedy (and probably without all the secret philandering and drug addiction!).

2. Obama's detractors are going to say he doesn't have enough experience. But the truth is that in politics, the more experience you have, the more the opposition has to hang you with. John Kerry had a truckload of experience, and he was all but burned in effigy on the national campaign. Meanwhile, George W. Bush's "experience" amounted to screwing up every company his daddy let him run, and he was hailed as a great man of the people. Experience should be a non-issue in this campaign.

3. Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the appearance that launched Obama to national fame in the first place, is still the most energizing, inspiring political speech that I've seen given in my lifetime. "It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kids with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope -- hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!" It was like a moment out of The West Wing, if Martin Sheen was taller, skinnier and of mixed race. And the fact is, on the campaign trail, political rhetoric sells -- look at John Edwards and his "two Americas." Hillary Clinton is, let's face it, just not that great a public speaker.

4. Let's talk about electability. Right-wingers hate Hillary. They've been spewing nasty, horrible rhetoric about the Clintons for about fifteen years now. Right-wingers are obviously not going to vote Democrat anyway, but there's enough vitriol out there against her to turn moderates and undecideds against her. Obama hasn't inspired nearly the same level of blind hatred, and I think he will appeal to those people more.

5. Hillary voted for the war in Iraq. Now she has maybe, possibly changed her mind. She's pretty much totally hedging her bets. Remember the "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" debacle of the 2004 election? I guarantee we will see a repeat of that in this election if Hillary is the nominee. Obama, on the other hand, never passes up an opportunity to say he has always been against the Iraq war (easy for him to say considering he wasn't a senator when the vote went down, but that's neither here nor there).

Also, I just discovered this useful site called On the Issues -- "every political leader on every issue." You can search for a candidate to see where they stand, and you can take a quiz that will match you up with the candidate whose stance most resembles your own. (The last time I took a quiz like that, I kept getting Dennis Kucinich. Thanks, that was helpful. They should divide it up into "Candidate Whose Stance Most Resembles Your Own" and "Candidate Who is Actually Electable That You Might Find Least Objectionable.")