Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill. and CC '83, officially entered the race for the Democratic nomination for president on Saturday with a speech in Springfield, Ill.
"In the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together ... I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States," he said in his speech.
If elected to the White House, Obama will be the first black president and the first president to have graduated from Columbia College.
Columbia College is behind other Ivy League undergraduate schools-Harvard, Yale, and Princeton-that have sent graduates to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Though Obama's official Facebook wall boasts over 1,000 more posts than Senator Hillary Clinton's, D-N.Y., Clinton is widely considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, due in large part to her years in the White House as first lady and her six years as Senator, compared to Obama's two years.
"I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness-a certain audacity-to this announcement," he said in his speech on Saturday. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."
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