'Don't Tell Mama I'm for Obama,' Ill. Senator's Aides Say

MANCHESTER, N.H., Dec. 10, 2006 — -- Adoring, standing-room-only crowds giddily awaited Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at his first stop this morning, at a book signing in Portsmouth, N.H. But it didn't sound like the freshman senator was selling just books.

"We've got a series of very important decisions to make, and we have the opportunity to make them not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans," he said in a speech that mentioned health insurance, climate change, lobbying reform and the war in Iraq.

Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., Obama said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

"It doesn't bend on its own," he added. "It bends because each of us individually, we put our hand on that arc, and we bend it in the direction of justice. That, I think, is the essence of hope. And that is what I think America is hungry for, right now. And I'm looking forward to being a part of that process, with you of bending that arc in the direction of justice."

The excitement Obama is generating among crowds in this first-in-the-nation-primary state could be bad news for his possible Democratic rivals, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the presumed frontrunner.

"I was behind Sen. Clinton prior to getting to know Barack Obama," said New Hampshire resident Kim Cain. "I'm a woman. I would love to have a woman president. But I think she's too much of a politician. I think to effect change, we need somebody outside of that system."

But there is much voters do not know about Obama beyond his charisma and message of national unity. And the process through which the American people may learn more about Obama -- his relatively unstudied state legislative voting record, his teenage cocaine use, questions about a land deal he entered into with a questionable character -- may be unpleasant. And new.

"Sen. Obama has never had a rough political week in his life," said Lynn Sweet, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. "He's never had one negative commercial run against him."