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Barack Obama, the affable junior senator from Illinois, is emerging as one of the leading contenders

for presidential bid in 2008.

Last month, New York Times columnist David Brooks penned a column urging the senator

to run Barack run.

What's the appeal that makes Barack popular not just among Democrats but across the spectrum?

Cato's managing editor of Regulation magazine Tom Fiery asked himself this question in a recent Cato at Liberty blog post.

He's our guest for today's podcast.

What do you make of all this Baroque fever sweeping the nation?

Everyone's certainly excited about it.

I'm not really sure what to make of it. I guess in part we have this unknown person, but you know he's shown up on the national scene,

showed up with a lot of celebration, and as I kind of refer to in my post, he's almost like a Rorschak inkblatt test.

We look at him, we don't have any defined conception of what he believes, he really hasn't

said very much about what he believes, or at least not enough that people know it.

So we look at him, we kind of see ourselves.

We've done this before with other presidents, right?

So I guess maybe this is another case of that.

You think he's a contender for 2008?

If only by default, I mean, there's only really one other major contender on the

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