Like I said, I’m not normally very much into the politics, but when I heard about Louie wanting to run for mayor and how he launched his campaign in Chinatown, I couldn’t help but draw the comparison.

On a side note, I guess I can see some similarities between Louie and me, but at least I can speak a little Chinese.

Ever careful, I think the comparison to Obama is premature. We haven’t seen the substantive speechifying from Louie as we’ve seen from Obama. I do not mean that in terms of volume, because the American presidential race is of course, magnified a million times over. Obama’s currency is hope, and it is demonstrated by his oratory and his breaking away from the past. Louie doesn’t speak in council with great flourish, nor provide any substantive solutions other than provide a serviceable dissent to whatever Sullivan and the NPA put before council.

David Berner has written in The Province a glowing endorsement of Louie, but again, how he comports himself in the sort of primary within Vision will be something to watch.

Speaking of Berner, when he appeared with me on my interview program, I noted that it was ironic that Louie does not speak Chinese, but that Sam Sullivan does. This goes to your point about launching his campaign at a Chinese restaurant. Douglas Jung, the first Chinese MP back in the late 1950s, won Vancouver Centre largely without the backing of the Chinese community. Jung’s background was similar to Louie in that he had been born here, grew up here, and did not speak Chinese. Jung was spiteful of the Chinese community because they hadn’t supported him previously and saw him, for lack of a better phrase, a sellout, and in the following campaign went out of his way to ignore invitations from the Chinese community. Alex Louie had actually organised the then Chinese community in Chinatown overwhelmingly against Jung, and Jung was defeated by Jack Nicholson. So, Louie’s tacit nod to his roots is a knowing political move, giving him perhaps a bigger boost than say Robertson’s entry some weeks previous.

So, while you make an excellent prima facie case for the similarities between Louie and Obama, we’ll simply have to wait and see. At this point, you provide good advice to the campaign, Mike, that they should present Louie to the populace as a sort of Obama for Vancouver. Because yes, even here, this whole Obamamania resonates, and come November in the midst of a presidential campaign, Vancouverites may pine for something similar.