Not that long ago after he had been elected to the Senate Barack Obama sang a much different tune about running for president. He repeatedly said he would stay out of this race.

The above clip is what he told his Chicago constituents directly on local television.

On Meet the Press from January 22nd 2006 Obama told Tim Russert:

SEN. OBAMA: I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed.

MR. RUSSERT: So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: I will not.

At the moment Senator Obama just entered his second year of that six year term. It is a contrast, for better or worse, from Senator Hillary Clinton who promised to serve out her first six year term in office before considering a run for the White House. She did and in this last election when asked about a run she would not rule it out and made no promises about keeping the full six year term.

For my editorial opinion, in the long run it won’t matter too much but it will be an issue he will have to deal with and any enterprising 527 or official campaign will score some quick points by bringing it up.

It won’t preclude him from winning the nomination by any stretch but one could easily mount a counter campaign against him by saying “One of the first meaningful things you did as a Senator was lie to your constituents.” Then he would counter with his own message about this being the right time and serving his constituents even better as president. Then a counter message “So at best you are a flip-flopper and opportunist, at worst you are a liar. You talk repeatedly about cleaning up Washington, ridding it of corruption and deception, the least voters can ask for from you is to do the same with your own maneuvering.”

Obama actually didn’t serve his counter attack well in his opening speech when he said, basically, he hadn’t been in Washington long, hadn’t spent much time getting to know people or building relationships but that he had been there long enough for his taste. In a campaign where his inexperience and discourse about his rhetoric being “shallow” are the top issues these two different messages he has sent out could easily come back to haunt him.