In 2004, the newly elected junior senator from Illinois told reporters he was flatly ruling out a run for the presidency in 2008.

But three years of listening to Time, Newsweek and Neil Young telling you to go for the White House can have a powerful effect on a young man, which in terms of the U.S. Senate, 45-year-old Barack Obama surely is.

Does his presidential bid make him a flip-flopper? Hardly. If he'd said it one day and changed his mind the next, yes. But three years of breathing the strange air of Washington, D.C. can make a reasonable person change his mind.

The Chicagoan will face formidable primary opposition from U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton -- and if he survives, a potential run by Rudy Guiliani, the Republican mayor of New York City who on Friday said there is a "real good chance" he will seek the GOP nomination. That $2,100-a-plate breakfast Guiliani had was a pretty good indicator. Not many people shell out that kind of money just for some sausage and eggs with a former mayor.

But Clinton and Guiliani are already known quantities. Obama's a freshman senator and had served in the Illinois Legislature only from 1997 to 2004. His views on a national and international level are still in formation.

Maybe it is that unknown quality that makes Obama appealing. He has yet to do anything to disappoint, embarrass or alienate his constituency. There's no specter of Monica Lewinsky hovering over him, no war in Iraq that will be his legacy.

His support of abortion laws -- he calls a abortion a "tragedy" but does not oppose its legality -- will cost him among single-issue, pro-life folks, but beyond that whence comes the opposition?

Is it enough not to be unpopular? Have we reached such a low point in the history of the presidency that we are willing to become excited about a guy who is not someone else? We probably have.

He can be an exciting speaker, as he demonstrated at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. His exotic resume lets everyone claim a piece of him. African American in the true sense of the word, Obama's parents were, in his words, a "pitch black" Kenyan father and a "milk white" Kansan mother who met in school in Hawaii. They later moved to Indonesia, and his Indonesian half-sister is married to a Canadian of Chinese descent.

Is it enough that he is intelligent and articulate, that he is a man from nowhere who can appeal to almost everywhere?

He thinks so. So do a lot of other people.

But I'd still like to see more evidence Obama has some there there.

The opinions are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at markk@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-4170.