Kathlyn Hotynski

Although it doesn’t occur to everyone, various types of card games have a lot in common with the game of politics.

Firstly, politicians must learn to control their emotions like poker players, so as not to give their opponents anything they can use to defeat them – for example, Howard Dean’s over-excited rebel yell in 2004 that doomed his campaign.

They also must learn to play with whatever cards fate deals them, relying on grassroots campaigns when they do not have the funding of an oil baron. And of course, there are large amounts of flat-out lying in both fields of expertise.

But what about the recent example of politicians playing their trump card too soon in the form of the Democratic Party and its golden boy, Barack Obama? By pushing this first-term senator from Illinois to run for president, it seems the Democrats may be wasting a potential future political ace in a vain attempt to recapture the presidency.

This is not to say that Obama is not a good man or not presidential material. Indeed, he has a level of confidence and charisma unseen since Hillary Clinton’s husband was beginning his quest for the White House.

Obama has shown in his brief political career that he is capable of working with both Democrats and Republicans to push through legislation, which is something the United States is sorely missing with its current president.

The fact that he is a self-professed Christian also helps his appeal to the religious right that helped end John McCain’s campaign in 2000. His ability to deflect attacks against him, such as the questioning of his relationship with militant Islam, recalls the campaign and presidency of the Democratic Party’s last president. His diverse background would also help his appeal to voters if he were to run for the presidency.

But what should be troubling to Obama and his supporters is how very little experience in politics he has. He is barely into his first term in the U.S. Senate, so his voting record is miniscule compared to his potential Republican opponents or those within the Democratic Party.

Although he has been involved with politics since 1996 with his election to the Illinois state Senate, he has only been a part of national politics since 2004. He has not worked in an executive position in any form of government such as governor like Clinton and Reagan did.

Obama may have the personality and charisma to be a presidential candidate, but there needs to be more than that if he actually hopes to make something of the candidacy.

Despite his obvious shortcomings in the field of political experience, Obama’s supporters claim this can be turned into an advantage for his campaign. Nicole Schilling, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Greene County, Iowa, recently said in a USA Today article that Obama is “kind of a blank slate, and people are projecting what they think onto him.”

But while the idea of a politician with a near blank slate for a voting record might be appealing after John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted against it” debacle in 2004, Obama’s supporters are forgetting that they are still going against a viscous Republican Party.

This was the same party that managed to turn Kerry’s military record into a liability – it should be no stretch of the imagination that they will be able to turn Obama’s inexperience into a major issue for voters. If they were to run someone against Obama, like McCain, the political ads listing his storied Senate career compared to Obama’s are not hard to imagine.

Some of Obama’s supporters may say that even if he does not become president in 2008, he is young enough to recover and try again in 2012 or 2016 if need be. But the fate of John Edwards, a similarly young and inexperienced Democrat in the 2004 election, should be kept in mind. Not only did Edwards lose out the Democratic candidacy to Kerry, but he also failed as a vice president candidate.

Now, over two years after his losing bid for the White House, Edwards’ declared candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president is largely falling on deaf ears.

Much like in a high-stakes poker game, there are very few second chances in the political arena – both the politicians and voters are very slow to forgive someone who does not follow through with their support. If Obama were to fail as Edwards did in 2004, he might risk any future chances he has for making a charge at the presidency.

This does not mean Obama doesn’t have the potential to be a presidential candidate – just that he hasn’t reached that potential yet. If Obama were to wait until 2012 or 2016 to run for president, he will have built up a more substantial Senate record, giving the American people more assurance of his skills as a politician. And if he really needs to be in the White House to make the Democrats happy, he would make a perfect vice president to whoever comes out of primaries as winner.

Instead, the Democrats have chosen to push all their chips into this race, desperately wanting to win the presidency. But this may be a hand that the Democrats cannot win at this time, and they may be costing themselves a chance to regain the White House in the future.

Langton is a junior print journalism major and copy editor of The Spectator.