The Triangle

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: Darrell Byers Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama speaks during his town hall meeting in Duncanville, Texas, on Feb. 27.

Poor Hillary Clinton. How can you fight stardust?

As of this writing, it appears far likelier than not that Barack Obama will be the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Probably, the Republicans would like to run him too if they could. If "Obamamania" spreads any more, the junior senator from Illinois could be the unity candidate, and we could just cancel the November election and install him in the White House right now. (This would have the double advantage of putting the Messiah in office, and kicking King Herod out.)

There has never been a phenomenon like this in American politics. Before we're all swept away for good, it might be well to examine it.

It is firstly the case that Barack Obama is the first African-American candidate to come within hailing distance of a major party's presidential nomination. Colin Powell might have beaten him to the punch in the Republican primaries of 1996. He might even have made a single-term president of Bill Clinton, which would have spared the Republic acquaintance with Monica Lewinsky. That would have been historic enough; but a Powell candidacy was, if not foregone, at least plausible. Colin Powell was a well-known and widely admired figure. He'd been in the corridors of power for so long that he'd almost begun to pass for white. (Have you noticed? Everyone loses pigment in the White House, except for the Devil.) And it was hardly a stretch to imagine a former Army Chief of Staff, the architect of one of the most stunningly successful military campaigns of modern times, as commander-in-chief.

Obama, like Powell, is unthreateningly black. In fact, he is just as much white as black. His mother was white, and he was raised in privileged, indeed almost barracked white communities. His "Negritude," as they used to say, is mostly a learned behavior. Of course, he counts as black, because if you are a member of a despised minority, a single tincture of that minority's blood will turn you its color. We have mostly forgotten the terms "high yaller" or "passing for white," although the recent memoir of the late critic Anatole Broyard has reminded us of those days when one desperately concealed black blood if one could. But it is still true that if you are partly black in American society, you are all black. Obama would never have had any choice but to be a black candidate. And so his rise is remarkable on that account alone.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools