Obama Wanted to Be President as a Kindergartener

Sen. Barack Obama has said on the campaign trail that he has not been planning to run for President for decades, an indirect jab at Sen. Hillary Clinton, who by some accounts has been planning it. Here’s part of the Clinton campaign’s press release responding to Obama’s claim:

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Never mind the fact that in elementary school, almost every student across the country probably writes something about what they would like to be when they grow up, and I’d bet a good percentage of them say they’d like to be president. I’m sure I wrote something as a six- or seven-year-old saying I wanted to be president. I’m not sure if that means I’m opening up myself to charges that I have been planning to run for president since then, but I guess all is fair in the last month of the Iowa Caucuses…

Update: Obama spokesperson Bill Burton says, “I’m sure tomorrow they’ll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut.”