re: #240 wozzablog

Obama was better known than a lot of people gave him credit for being before he announced his pursuit of the presidency.

Long term state senator, key note speaker at the party convention, well publicised run for Senate seat in Illinois.
The base - those turned on by Democratic politics knew a lot about Obama before he announced on the steps in Springfield.

Huntsman doesn’t have that - and he doesn’t share the reflexive nationalistic populism of the GOP base. Utah is not a hot bed of interest for GOP local watchers natrionwide (see Mormonism).
State Governor sure, but in Utah.

Obama was a rising star for a long time — the NYT ran a profile on him in 1993 when he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. He had mentors in the Illinois legislature who spent 3 evenings a week, every week, schooling him, and made sure his name was listed near the top of the sponsor list on legislation they knew would pass by a wide margin and be broadly popular. Oprah gave him media lessons before he decided whether to run for the Senate.

John Kerry wasn’t pulling names randomly out of a hat when he asked him to deliver that keynote speech at the ‘04 convention — and after that speech, his book got rereleased and the liberal netroots swarmed him on his book tour begging him to run in 08.