CHICAGO — The guy driving the car bearing the license plate "OBAMA" isn't a member of the senator's staff or even a volunteer on his presidential campaign.

He is a 51-year-old self-described "eccentric middle-aged white guy."

Bill Slater, who lives in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood with his wife and thousands of computer textbooks that climb from floor to ceiling, got the license plate in December, when his decidedly tamer C455136 was up for renewal.

Slater looked at his 1997 Ford Taurus and saw the perfect outlet to show how badly he wants Sen. Barack Obama in the White House.

He said the plate gets a honk and thumbs-up three or four times per week and once led to a "black power" fist on the Eisenhower Expressway. Slater appreciates the solidarity. He is fed up. George W. Bush is a failure, Slater says. John Edwards is "just a damn trial lawyer." Hillary Clinton "wants the job too bad."

Slater, a bald, bearded computer manager for the Veterans Administration, could go on and on. And given the opportunity, he does.

But Obama is different, he said. "The man says things like he believes it and he wants you to believe it," Slater said. "It's not like he's a used-car salesman and he would go do something else when you weren't looking."

Slater lived in Memphis when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. He worries about Obama's well being.

"I honest to God pray for Sen. Obama to be surrounded by angels with fiery swords," Slater said.

Loyola University political science professor Alan Gitelson said Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had their charisma, but that Obama might inspire like no other since John F. Kennedy. Hence the license plate.

"I don't think any of them have that Camelot mantle that Obama holds," Gitelson said. "I'm not sure you can define the magic of these candidates. You just have this very visceral feeling about someone who seems bright and caring."

Slater admits the license plate might look more at home on a high-powered yuppie-mobile, like, say, a Hummer, than his bulbous black Taurus, which has logged 134,000 miles.

But even for $1 million, he said, he wouldn't surrender the plate. So forget it, Hummer owners.

"I'm not a very sizzly guy," Slater said. "But as soon as I put that tag on my car, it made it look more powerful. It's like it grew arms and had muscles it can flex."

The only person who could wrestle the plate away is the senator himself.

"If he ever wrote a letter and said, 'Gee Mr. Slater, I'd like to have it for our family vehicle,' I'd feel obliged to give it up. But I hope he doesn't ever write that letter."