Obama in 2008?

Senator Barack Obama is touring Africa on a highly anticipated tour. The Chicago Sun Times:

Lenai is a 27-year-old Kenyan medical student from Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret in the western portion of the country. Lenai and I have a mutual friend and Lenai's dispatches to us vividly describe the escalating anticipation. He writes me of the excitement over the coming of "this great senator to Africa, Kenya included."

"Ya, it has been all over the news -- TVs and radios and even in the mouths of people in the street -- corridors, offices and shops.

"What is sooo amusing is what we see in the TV back at the Obama's father native land the folks are sooo excited.

"Some think it their own relative who became the U.S. president that is paying them a visit; some think it's a great politician who is coming to bail them from their problems.

I do not think Obama is, as of now, actively courting a nomination (either v.p. or president) for 2008. But, there is a tendancy for traveling senators to run in tumultuous times. The Wikipedia on Senator Kennedy:

During his three and a half years as a US Senator, Kennedy visited apartheid-ruled South Africa, helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty stricken Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City, visited the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of War on Poverty programs and, reversing his prior stance, called for a halt in further escalation of the Vietnam War.