From the Tribune…

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (R-Ill.) gave Mayor Richard Daley a political boost today, endorsing the mayor for reelection to a sixth term in office.

“I travel around the country a lot, and I see a lot of cities,” Obama said. “I can honestly say I am always glad to be back home because I don’t think there is a city in America that has blossomed so much over the last couple of decades.” […]

The Daley administration has been beset by hiring and contracting scandals during the mayor’s current term, and Obama said that “I continue to be concerned” about City Hall corruption. But he asserted that Daley has taken action, including strengthening procurement rules and appointing a strong inspector general to produce a “cleaner government.”

“Ultimately, you want to look at the whole record…and I think the city has moved overall in a positive direction,” Obama said at a news conference at Daley’s downtown campaign headquarters.

Sun-Times…

In August 2005, Obama nearly ran into trouble with Daley when he hedged on whether he’d support the mayor for re-election in light of the corruption investigations at City Hall.

Asked then if he planned to support the mayor or if the corruption probes might have given him pause, the senator replied, “What’s happened — some of the reports I’ve seen in your newspaper, I think, give me huge pause.”

An hour later, he called the Sun-Times saying he wanted to clarify his remarks. Obama said the mayor was “obviously going through a rough patch right now.” But he also said Chicago has “never looked better” and that “significant progress has been made on a variety of fronts.” The senator said then it was “way premature” to talk about endorsements because the mayor had not yet announced his candidacy.

Daley didn’t hold a grudge against Obama. He reportedly concluded that the freshman senator had been trapped by a loaded question.

Meanwhile, my syndicated column this week takes a look at the Obamarama phenomenon, (and contains an unfortunate headline that I didn’t write).

This Obama phenomenon is not rational in any form. It is, in fact, almost completely irrational.

As the skeptics continually point out, average Obama supporters know very little about the man they adore. But I’ve noticed that the more exposure he gets, the more people swoon over him. In some ways he’s been able to accomplish on a fairly wide scale what JFK did with my Grandma at that union gathering in Chicago. Millions are personally smitten, and, at least for now, there’s no reasoning with them on this topic.

He’s inexperienced? That’s a good thing. He’s black in a nation that still has a lot of bigots? It won’t matter and actually may help. He’s politically untested? He’ll get all the seasoning he needs on the campaign trail. On and on it goes.