Barack Obama's decision to announce his candidacy for president at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., tells you all you need to know about how he wants his political biography to be read.

The Hawai'i-born Obama came of political age in the hurly-burly atmosphere of Chicago and as an Illinois state legislator.

He doesn't hide his Hawai'i past and indeed speaks fondly of it. He returns here every year to visit family and renew Island ties.

But as much as we might wish it, Barack Obama the politician is not from Hawai'i. In a political sense, he is from the Midwest, from Illinois and from the intense political trenches of Chicago.

The choice of the Old State Capitol is a deliberate effort to evoke the memory and image of Abraham Lincoln, another Illinois politician who went on to a brief career in Congress and then to the White House.

Obama is too smart and far too modest to compare himself directly to Lincoln. But others surely will, at least in the sense that he comes across as a racial healer. It's no coincidence that Obama's announcement came from the same spot where Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" speech.

In a profile of Obama's time in Hawai'i that appeared in yesterday's paper, reporter Johnny Brannon noted that while he enjoyed his high school years here, making lifetime friends, he also struggled with his own identity as an African-American.

It wasn't a matter of experiencing outright discrimination or unfair barriers. Rather it was a matter of figuring out where his place was in multi-cultural Hawai'i and multi-cultural Punahou School.

Going forward, Obama the candidate will speak often of his years as a community organizer in Chicago, as an Illinois state legislator and as a member of the U.S. Senate. He is expected to talk about his efforts to bridge gaps between races and economic classes, and he will talk about his work as a coalition-builder in the Illinois legislature.

He will speak far less often of his time in Hawai'i, and why should he?

The plain fact is that Hawai'i is too exotic and too far off the map to serve as much of a political launching pad for anyone.

The closest we have come to producing a true national figure is senior U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, who chaired the 1968 Democratic National Convention and was seriously talked about as a vice-presidential candidate. But even our most able politicians (think of the likes of Patsy Mink or Hiram Fong) were seen on the national stage as exotics, interesting as much for their ethnicity as for their many accomplishments.

Perhaps the biggest statement Obama can make about Hawai'i is not to make all that much of a statement about his birthplace. Folks from the Islands have already made it big on the national stage in business, sports, entertainment, medicine and education, not because of where they came from but on the basis of who they are and what they were able to accomplish.

Why not in politics as well?

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.