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Change, change, change. Are Democrats about to shoot themselves in the foot again over this great debate between "change" and "experience?" Why not have both?

As a native of Illinois, I've been fascinated watching the dynamic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama rise from relative obscurity to seemingly topple the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Barely halfway through his first Senate term, Obama isn't just taking on heir-apparent, former first lady and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment, he's also challenging establishment America as well — the very same America that put George W. Bush into the Oval Office, twice.

Will the nomination turn on the issue of undefined "change" — either the change offered by a first black president or a first woman president? Of the two, easily the most dramatic change would be the first female president in 231 years of the American republic, if for no other reason than women are more than half the nation.

Less dramatic than gender, race or even party change, perhaps the real change that Americans thirst for most is honest, capable and reliable leadership that can accomplish a national agenda through compromise.

If that's the case, it would explain why the "experienced" Clinton — while losing in Iowa, but capturing New Hampshire — has led substantially in most national polls and beats all Republican comers except Arizona Sen. John McCain — who also, interestingly, is an "experienced" establishment candidate.

Many people are comparing Obama to the Kennedys — Jack and Robert — whose charisma and rhetoric combined to make them political naturals who essentially sought to sustain and broaden the popular policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of the lackluster GOP presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But unlike Obama, the Kennedys and their successor, Lyndon B. Johnson — who incidentally crushed the "change" candidacy of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and then turned the Kennedys' "New Frontier" into the "Great Society" — actually were mainstream party candidates who offered substantive ideas, programs and policies by which voters could judge them. These are scarce in Obama's "change" talk.

Indeed, so mainstream was Jack Kennedy that most political analysts say without big-time party boss and king-maker Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, who delivered Chicago and Illinois, the youthful Kennedy would have lost in 1960 to Richard Nixon. Daley's son, the current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, might have done the same for native son Obama, but fellow Chicagoan Oprah Winfrey may already have set that table.

But remember, it was Nixon, Eisenhower's vice president, who turned out to be the comeback, establishment kid, first beating the Democrats' civil rights hero Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey and then trouncing the king of change, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern. McGovern was the Obama of his day — drawing his support from progressive young Democrats and calling for drastic "change" at the height of the unpopular Vietnam War.

American voters may very well want dramatic "change" — maybe even the ill-defined, amorphous brand that Obama is preaching. But historically such nominees are left in the lurch in November.