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February 04, 2007
I Feel Sorry for Barack Obama
And so the racial politics begins, with Barack Obama's racial background the hot topic. The NY Times and Washington Post both ran articles about the many shades of identity and authenticity. I feel sorry for Obama because he's already getting the full metal speculum treatment on racial matters, and the prodding will only intensify. The Post wrote,
Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor who has followed Obama's political ascent, said that he may be forced to choose: "You can be elected president as a black person only if you signal at some level that you are independent from black people" -- a move she said would be "guaranteed" to make black people angry. "He is going to have to figure out whether there is a way not to alienate and anger a black base that almost by definition is going to be disappointed," she said.Already, that balancing act is causing some strains. Some of Obama's longtime black supporters in Illinois are grumbling about the largely white crowd of advisers who now surround Obama as he gears up his national campaign. "Who does he represent? That is what people are worried about," said Lorenzo Martin, publisher of the Chicago Standard newspapers, a chain of black-oriented weeklies that circulate in the southern suburbs. "When you look and see who is surrounding him, you are not going to see too many brothers. What you see is the liberal left."
The article goes into the gruesome racial politics around Obama, his parents, his supposed lack of connections to the "community," and the dreaded educational achievements of Harvard Law. We've got another year or more of this until the primaries start. When did judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin stop being the lodestar principle?
Am I naive to take Martin Luther King's vision seriously?
And this is only the beginning. As the campaign intensifies and racial rhetoric runs wild, the analysis of Obama's racial makeup will become more offensive. How long until somebody sneers that his white mother took his black father away from "the sisters"? I do believe it will reach that pathetic level of attack. His campaign website gives the story about his parents' Kenya-Kansas background here. I hope not.
If the Obama campaign, through no fault of the candidate's, sets off a mudslide of racial hysteria, it will come from the race-obsessed left rather than conservatives. Democrats will tie themselves into knots attempting to precisely measure Obama's authenticity, blackness, whiteness, Harvardness and everything elseness, rather than just looking at his experience and platform. Republicans may go through the same exercise in a more limited way, with Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, but it will be nothing compared to the frenzy as the left puts Obama, his parents and everybody associated with him under a pitiless racial microscope.
I find this, in a word, pathetic.
If the GOP can keep its wits about it (no small task), then it stands to benefit from the racial angst roiling the Democrats. Assuming Obama stays in the race at least through the primaries, the Republicans can position themselves as above the fray, the party that welcomes all races based on character and merit. Voters sickened by the race-baiting among the Democrats may turn back to the Republican, if the GOP can stay focused on a welcoming, inclusive, Guiliani-esque message and not dive into their own deep end of "The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!" hysteria.
Van | 02/04/07 at 07:40 AM | Categories: - GOTV '06 to '08
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Comments
Welcome to the real world Senator. If you want to be President go for it !
Paul | February 4, 2007 09:24 AM
