Today in the Times Maureen Dowd makes the very sensible suggestion that Dems should back Obama in '08, before his street cred and freshness value are worn out. But she also has a couple of caveats which I find bizarre. Consider, regarding skeptics of an Obama run: 

They fret that the Illinois senator would wilt against the Arizona senator's foreign policy experience — and he probably would.

When has any presidential candidate ever "wilt(ed) against" any other candidate's "foreign policy experience"?  This is one of those ridiculous inside-the-beltway shibboleths. Going back the last 46 years, the only winning presidential candidates who had more foreign policy experience than the guy they beat were George HW Bush in '88 and Nixon in '72. Going back further, Eisenhower had more for pol exp than Stevenson, but the Egghead hardly "wilted" in foreign policy debates. In our last election, if anyone "wilted" in debates over foreign policy, it was the guy who won the election - the incumbent - who still seemed like a lightweight struggling to remember countries' names after 4 years in office.

To believe that Americans select their presidents on the basis of experience in foreign policy is to take a far too lenient a view of the American electorate. In our last election, at a moment when the US's engagement with the foreign world was held to be of far greater importance than in any election in decades, speaking fluent French nevertheless was viewed as a liability. Welcome to America, or, as we like to call it, Greater Texas. What counts in for pol during a presidential election is not "experience"; Americans are far too anti-intellectual for that. What counts is an easily understandable attitude which comes across looking strong, not weak. If Obama would have a problem cultivating that image, then he might indeed have trouble in an election, but it has nothing to do with "experience".

In a related point, Dowd worries that others are right to say Americans would never elect someone who has a name that sounds like a terrorist's. I disagree. Once Obama's image becomes known, Americans will have no more problems with his name than they do with Hakeem Olajuwon's. If Americans' weakness is their anti-intellectualism (or even, lately, anti-competence-ism), their strong point is their lack of racism...towards rich people and celebrities.