Many Americans across a spectrum of hues have been on a self-congratulatory bender over the presidential candidacy of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. He’s an experience-challenged, 40-something, bright African-American who is a very viable presidential candidate. We have come a long way, haven’t we?
Or not.
Look at the hue and cry that resulted from innocuous comments by another presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Foreign Relations committee and a member of Congress since 1972. In a throw-away line to the “New York Observer,” he referred to Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
Forced to say something that showed assertiveness but not thin skin, Obama put out a statement that criticized Biden for being “historically inaccurate.” Obama mentioned former presidential candidates Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton, and that none would ever be considered “inarticulate.”
That wasn’t Biden’s point. The operative word is “mainstream.” Obama isn’t fringe, as in Chisholm and Moseley Braun, nor is he a professional provocateur and race-card careerist, as in Jackson and Sharpton.
At a time when much of America seems enamored of the “fresh new face” presidential paradigm, Obama seems a godsend from central casting. That’s what Biden was getting at. Nothing more.
Obama knows that too.