Lynn Sweet predicts Barack Obama will run for President in 2008. Strangely enough, the first thought that ran through my head when I read Sweet's article was, "this is going to drive John Kass nuts."

As some of you may know, Kass is the extremely talented, prolific, and (lone) conservative columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He's also one of the only columnists in the country - if not the only one - who hasn't completely lost his faculties and fallen down prostrate before Obama over the last couple of years - and if Obama does run for President that'll make Kass one of the country's most important columnists as well.

Here's what Kass wrote about Obama back on November 2, the day after a Chicago Tribune investigation revealed that Obama got a killer deal on some real estate in Chicago done in partnership with Tony Rezko, Governor Rod Blagojevich's rainmaker pal who was recently indicted on charges of corruption:

The Tribune story serves notice to all the national columnists, editorial writers and political reporters who've been genuflecting before their Obama icons. He might not walk on water after all.

So they should stop with the gooey public relations and start reporting before Obamaniacs seed Iowa's presidential cornfields this spring.

Obama isn't a bad fellow. I like him. He knows he's being used by some Democrats who see him as a pretty black candidate first rather than a man and as some empty vessel without a record into which they pour their ambition. There's racism in that, although they can't see it and probably never will.

They see Obama as some horse to ride into the 2008 presidential elections, a horse that's not named Hillary. [snip]

Some pundits will ignore the Tribune report because it doesn't fit the gauzy public relations narrative they've told so often that they've hypnotized themselves. Besides, they're busy helping Sen. John Kerry take his loafer out of his mouth.

Others will engage in fantastic verbal contortions, suggesting Obama is a victim of cynical reporters, a victim of the cunning Tony Rezko. This would suggest Obama is far too naive to become president, so they'll contort some more. Such gymnastics promise to be hilarious.

The fact is the Obamas and the Rezkos bought property in a fashionable South Side neighborhood next to each other on the same day, from the same lot, and the Obamas came out the winners.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kass for the first time just a few days after he wrote this column, and we talked about the Democrats' enfatuation with Obama, a man few in the country know anything about.

Consider just how meteoric Obama's rise has been. In 2000, he lost badly to Bobby Rush in the Democratic primary in Illinois 1st Congressional District. Four years later, with only about a month left in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, Obama was running tied with Dan Hynes for second place, ten points behind gazillionaire Blair Hull - until the frontrunner's campaign imploded in mid-to-late February amid revelations his wife had filed a restraining order against him for abuse (I think he admitted kicking her in the shin during a spat, if I recall).

Barring that last minute turn of events, Obama would still be an Illinois State Senator and two-time loser for higher office that no one in the country had ever heard of.

Instead, Obama won the primary in March and went on to give an excellent keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in August. Just like that, before he'd even officially been elected to the Senate, Obama became an overnight sensation and suddenly morphed into presidential material among Democrats and the media.

And so here we are. I don't know if Obama is going to run or whether he's presidential material or not. But as history has repeatedly shown, presidential politics is very much about timing and about being the person who rises to meet the opportunity of the moment. 2008 could very well be such a moment for Obama. Then again, maybe not.