John McWhorter makes the case at The Economist:
Mr Obama has a once-in-a-lifetime charisma that Hillary Clinton could never approximate, and she also suffers from the handicap of not being black. For all of his other plusses, part of Mr Obama?s appeal lies in the fact that many whites feel that voting for a black presidential candidate would be Doing the Right Thing. Leon Wieseltier has been explicit about this; he is not unique.
Some object that white voters have often claimed to support black candidates only to refrain from actually pulling the lever for them. But does this unquestionably apply to the Obama case? Are all those swooning whites fighting their way into his appearances racists deep-down, chasing Mr Obama as a rock star but loth to vote for “one of those people” as a President? There are blacks, after all, who have designated Obama “the kind of black they?re comfortable with”.
As for Republicans Mr Obama would be up against, assuming that Rudy Giuliani could not get the nomination because of his leftish background, I submit that Mitt Romney lacks the Element X to sway voters on the fence, and would only attract the party faithful. The same would be true of John McCain, looking and acting all of his 70 years. The bloom is off the rose.
It will be intriguing to see what a certain contingent makes of it if we finally have a black president. All rhetoric about America as an apartheid nation, racist to its core, will run up against the fact?which will ironically feel inconvenient to this contingent?that the man who wakes up every morning in the White House and flies on Air Force One is black.
Yes, it would be interesting to see how the race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would deal with a situation like that. The problem is that I’m just not sure that Obama has what it takes to go all the way, notwithstanding McWhorter’s argument.
I watched parts of the Democratic debate last night and he was, to say the least, underwhelming. Granted, this wasn’t the type of high-powered go-for-the-throat type of debate we’re likely to see as the primaries get closer but I just don’t see Obama being able to withstand the full-frontal onslaught we’re likely to see from the Clinton camp.
