ABC Digs Into Its News Archives…

ABC announced that “Nightline” will air on Wednesday night a never-before-seen interview that Barack Obama conducted with then-anchor Ted Koppel just hours before Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

In the interview Obama said: “I would say that the most important issue of the people are feeling right now is the sense of an America that is separating. That you have more and more opportunity, greater and greater wealth for some, and you have a vast middle class that is shrinking and a working class that is having trouble getting into the middle class. That the opportunities that might have been available to a family of modest means thirty years ago may no longer be available ten years from now.”

And Koppel remarked: “That sounds like the John Edwards to America theme.”

Obama: “Well you know, I think that John Edwards tapped into to something that is important.”

Koppel: “You were quoted in the Chicago Tribune this morning as focusing your attention on the Iraq War. Tell me what you were talking about there. I thought that is what you were going to say when I asked you what the theme was because that is what you told them.”

Obama: “Well, you know, the Iraq War is going to be an important issue in this convention, there is no doubt about it. There were people who supported the war and people who opposed the war inside that convention hall. But what people are unified about is that, when we make a decision to go to war, that it should not be ideologically driven, that it should be driven by set of facts and common sense with regards to how we mobilize our country and our national interest. And I think that there is a strong feeling that even among those that supported George Bush