Obama seeks to downplay great expectations.

Publication: Chicago Tribune (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Chicago Tribune

Byline: David Mendell

CHICAGO _An exhausted Barack Obama, who worked overtime to fan the flames of celebrity in his Democratic U.S. Senate campaign, spent his first day as Senator-elect Wednesday struggling to downplay his political star power and the great expectations that flow from it.

Obama has not yet served a single day in the Senate. But he is already the focus of intense speculation about presidential aspirations thanks to a blowout victory Tuesday over Republican Alan Keyes that will make Obama the Senate's only African-American member.

On Wednesday, Obama declared flatly that he would not run on a national party ticket in 2008 _ and he lectured reporters to stop asking him about it.

Instead, the 43-year-old Democrat stressed repeatedly that his only goals as a freshman senator would be to deliver a better standard of living for the voters of Illinois and figure out how to navigate the Capitol.

"I am not running for president. I am not running for president in four years. I am not running for president in 2008," said an emphatic Obama, still battling the remnants of a...

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