“I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

The inauguration of the first black president of the United States on January 20, 2009, was greeted with all the fanfare that one might expect.  Democrats, of course, were gleeful; not only had they taken back the White House after eight years in exile (and both houses of Congress as well), but they had also, as the pundits at Commentary and National Review Online were quick to concede, “made history.”

Most of the Republican leadership, of course, were not very happy, but they did their best to disguise their frustration, repeating the bullet points that the Republican National Committee had distributed months before: “historic day”; “proof of the greatness of America”; “President Obama may be a Democrat, but his election shows that the Republican rising tide of opportunity has lifted all boats—white, black, red, and yellow.”  Some GOP leaders didn’t have to pretend: Jack Kemp declared that returning as secretary of the Office of Housing and Urban Development under the first black president “just felt right.”

Of course, in his attempt to jump on the Obamawagon, outgoing President George W. Bush had made one final gaffe, declaring that “the election of that boy—uh, Mr. Hussein—I mean, Osam—Obama gives great hope to all the struggling democracies around the world, that someday, they, too, might rise above their differences and elect a white president, or prime minister, or tribal chief.”

Before the inauguration, the talking heads had all predicted that President Obama would deliver a Kennedy-esque Inaugural Address (which he did, with the help of Ted Sorenson) and then spend his first hundred days in office (itself a legacy of Camelot, by way of the glossy pages of Life) “bringing the country together.”  The only debate was whether President Obama would start the process of withdrawing from Iraq during the first 100 days, or whether he would wait until the country was united behind him.

No one expected what actually happened, however.  True, the pundits knew that, during the primary campaign, Obama had delivered a speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, denouncing the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart as “part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women,” but they all dismissed it as the sort of thing that Democrats have to say to capture the nomination.  Asking the Democratic Congress to overturn the partial-birth abortion ban and start the process of amending the Constitution to ensure the right to a federally funded abortion once and for all, however, struck even Hardball host Chris Matthews as extreme.

When President Obama signed an executive order repealing President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, the talking heads agreed that it didn’t seem to be a matter that had to be handled in the first hundred days, but it had been a campaign promise, after all.  When he followed that up, though, by proposing legislation to deny federal welfare funds to any state that didn’t “treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws,” Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert asked newly appointed LGBT Czar Donna Shalala whether the President had considered the possibility that such an act might not actually draw the country closer together.  “It’s all about full participation, Tim,” she replied.  “How can gays and lesbians be part of the American family if they’re not allowed to have families themselves?”

Nothing, however, compared to the ferocious debates that erupted on The McLaughlin Group and This Week With George Stephanapoulos after President Obama proclaimed, in his first nationally televised address from the Oval Office on February 12, 2009, that it was “time to lay to rest the legacy of slavery.”  To that end, he announced that he would bypass Congress and sign a “New Emancipation Proclamation,” appointing a “blue-ribbon commission,” based on a bill that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced in every Congress for the past 20 years, to determine whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.”  If the commission responded in the affirmative, President Obama declared, he would begin the process of withdrawing the troops from Iraq and use the “peace dividend” to set up “Lincoln Trusts” for everyone who could show that he had an African-American ancestor who had arrived in the United States before January 1, 1863.

Republican leaders immediately announced that “the honeymoon is over” and denounced President Obama for “trying to hijack the legacy of the first Republican president.”  Secretary Kemp, however, applauded the address, declaring that “Abraham Lincoln’s vision of a color-blind America has finally come to fruition—and only an African-American President could have made it happen.”

Here in mid-March 2008, it is, of course, too early to announce the election for Obama.  Hillary Clinton appears determined to fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention, and a few more surprises like Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement and the video of Obama’s black-nationalist pastor’s anti-American Christmas sermon might reduce the Republican crossover vote (which has gone heavily for Obama) in the remaining primaries.  Going into the convention without all of the delegates needed for the nomination, Obama might find that uncommitted superdelegates are more comfortable going with the she-devil they know, rather than the messiah they don’t.

Still, the safe money is on Obama to be the Democratic nominee.  And if, come January 2009, he, rather than John McCain, takes the oath of office, Obama will have more people to thank than just the Democratic “Obamamaniacs” who swoon in carefully choreographed sequences at rallies all across the country.  Delivering the keynote address at the DNC in 2004 first brought him to national prominence, but it was the Republican Party in the Land of Lincoln that made Barack Obama a “rock star.”

A state senator from 1996 on, Obama won a majority of votes in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in March 2004, against Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes and multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull.  Still, he faced an uphill battle to win the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald, a maverick conservative who had never quite fit in with the mainstream of the Illinois Republican Party.  Fitzgerald’s surname wasn’t Ryan, which is the Illinois Republican answer to the Democrats’ Daley.  Worse yet, he had personally pushed for the appointment of another maverick Fitzgerald (no relation) as a special prosecutor to investigate corruption among Republican elected officials, including the governor, George—what else?—Ryan.

Patrick Fitzgerald would eventually get his man: George Ryan is currently serving a six-year, six-month sentence in federal prison.  In the meantime, Illinois Republicans, true to form, nominated another Ryan, Jack, for the U.S. Senate in March 2004.  Jack Ryan was once married to actress Jeri Ryan, who played the voluptuous Borg Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager.  Apparently, he realized that this was his chief claim to fame, because the records of their 1999 divorce, obtained by the Chicago Tribune in June 2004, showed that Jack had attempted to get Jeri to perform sex acts with and on him in public clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris.  Three days after denying the allegations, Ryan dropped out of the race for U.S. Senate.

A credible candidate was ready to step in: Jim Oberweis, a dairy magnate who had placed second to Ryan in the March primary.  The Republican leadership, however, never seriously considered Oberweis.  Not only was his name not Ryan, but he had risen in the polls through his willingness to attack an issue that the Republican Party was desperate to avoid: illegal immigration.

For over a month, Barack Obama went unchallenged, but once he delivered the Democratic keynote on July 27, a small group of conservative Republicans in Illinois, led by state senators Dave Syverson and Steve Rauschenberger, knew what they had to do.  As Rauschenberger told the Los Angeles Times,

We needed to find another Harvard-educated African American who had some experience on the national political scene.  We need that because the Democrats have made an icon out of Barack Obama, and the only way to fight back is to find your own icon–and that is not an easy thing to do.

The call was made, and perennial Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes—who had blasted Hillary Clinton in 2000 for moving to New York to run for Senate—grabbed his carpetbag.  From the moment he arrived in Illinois to accept the nomination, his poll numbers began to drop.  In a state where a Chicago Tribune poll showed that “94 percent of voters who identified themselves as Republicans are white,” Keyes’ attempts to portray himself as “blacker than Obama” (even beating Obama to the punch in demanding reparations for the descendants of slaves) simply called attention to the fact that Obama is whiter than Keyes.  In the end, Obama received almost as many Republican votes as did Keyes, and Obama’s stunning victory (70 to 27 percent) set the stage for his current presidential run.

The parallels between the Illinois Senate race in 2004 and the U.S. presidential race in 2008 are many: The Republicans have not chosen the best candidate, but one who is weak on immigration, afraid to discuss what longtime WGN Radio talk-show host Milt Rosenberg calls “the tan factor,” and who, according to Arizona Republican insiders who support him, may well have some sexual skeletons in his closet.  (McCain strategists may have subtly encouraged the New York Times to investigate his supposed affair with a lobbyist, in order to throw reporters off the scent and to immunize the candidate against more substantive allegations that might arise.)

Combine all of that with a late convention (it will be held in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September); McCain’s age (at 72, he would be the oldest man ever elected president); and his notorious temper, which ruined his chances in 2000 and has already led to several embarrassing incidents during the primary campaign, and there’s no guarantee McCain will be the Republican nominee in November.  Even if he is, he may spend the last months of the campaign on the defensive.

Meanwhile, in a windowless room deep in a basement in Illinois, lit only by televisions playing his debates with Barack Obama on an endless loop, Alan Keyes bides his time, waiting for the phone to ring.  The Republicans may have lost his number, but the Constitution Party is holding its convention in April in Kansas City, Missouri, home of the Negro League Baseball Museum.  This could still be the year.