Obama Plays the American People on Race
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Presidential campaigns are a tricky business. Usually the candidate is someone experienced in politics who the American people know. Barack Obama’s time in the national spotlight is coming up on only three years this summer, and so he has written a book, The Audacity of Hope, to compensate for his lack of experience and to introduce him to us. There is one inherent problem with this: a candidate cannot script every moment of his career, as much as he would like to. A book, however, is very scripted. Without the experience and with only his book, the only way to get a sense of the ‘real’ Obama is to look through the scripted book and search hard for Obama. I think I have found him.
I feel comfortable saying that the only reason Obama is a presidential candidate right now is because of his race. Eighty-nine of the other ninety-nine senators have as much or more experience as he does in national politics. And he has earned a perfect 100 for his “Liberal Quotient” score from the Americans for Democratic Action, meaning he is among the elite rankings of the most liberal senators. He has some work ahead of him before he becomes the moderate Democrat who would be able to compete in a general election. So his race aside, he has very little to offer as a competitive candidate.
What has happened to America that we get such an inexperienced person rocketed to a party’s top tier of candidates just because he is black or multicultural? Is it a sign of the overly political correct culture we have developed that people jump on the Obama bandwagon with such impunity? It is necessary for a president to be tolerant of other cultures and races, but a candidate’s own race should never be the most important factor in his resume. Indeed, it should hardly factor in his candidacy at all. We pick presidents based on their qualifications, not what they look like.
But that doesn’t deter Obama. Ideally, the way that Obama wants to appear throughout his book is as a moderate senator, especially when it comes to racial issues. In Audacity, Obama begins his race chapter caring about African-American issues, but then transitions to a larger theme of there being no ‘race issues,’ that what is good for blacks is also good for Latinos and other impoverished races. What people view as race issues are actually social ones. While I think that any step away from making everything about race is a step in the right direction, I have to question his argument. If he honestly feels this way, why doesn’t he just say it from the beginning? Why go through the stories of attending Rosa Parks’s funeral and the race questions following Hurricane Katrina?
The answer is that he wants the pains of “Black America” to sink into the reader before mentioning the conflicting statement that “there is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America.” Sure, it is contradictory, but we aren’t supposed to notice that. The racial ideologues who will read the book will see themselves in it just as much as moderates will. Obama crafts his opinions in this way so that he can appeal to both factions. While appearing to move toward the moderate spectrum is politically wise (after all, being a racial ideologue is what doomed Al Sharpton’s candidacy), one has to wonder whether people will fall for it. Hopefully people will see his voting record and realize the truth; they will see that they are being played.
Not only have Obama’s views on race in America changed, but his views on his own race have changed. In contrast to previous statements he made that downplay his Caucasian half, he prides himself on his own diversity and that of his family. He compares his family gatherings to UN general assembly meetings, a conglomeration of white, black, and Asian. There are no Latinos in his family, but fear not, because the ever-diverse Obama has that base covered with a sister who is half Indonesian, but who he says is commonly mistaken for being Mexican. He has all the big races covered; therefore, he must be an excellent candidate for president and we should all vote for him because of his family’s diversity. Isn’t that all that matters? What else could the American people possibly want in a President besides diversity? Oh, I remember: experience. Sorry Obama. America is ready for a black president, just not you.
Barack Obama. The Audacity of Hope. 384 pages. Crown, 2006.
