In 1960, John F. Kennedy had to give a speech that, hopefully, would put to rest the fears some people had about electing a Catholic to the presidency.
Because no Catholic had ever been elected President at that time.
Yesterday, Barack Obama had to give a speech that, hopefully, will put to rest the fears that some people have about electing a black man to the presidency.
Because no black has ever been elected President.
I suspect that, at the time, Kennedy and his team thought that reassuring the doubters was going to be a tough row to hoe.
All things considered, I’d offer you that JFK had it easier.
After all, there was no video of the Pope screaming anti-Protestant dogma at the Sunday crowd in St Peter’s Square.
And Kennedy wasn’t faced with public pressure to “disown” that nice guy in the tall white pointed hat.
He just basically did his best to assure people that he was his own man and he clearly understood the definition of the term “separation of church and state.”
We know how that election turned out.
And I wont wander off the point for long but, I think it’s kind of cool that the conventional wisdom is that Kennedy’s paper thin victory over Nixon was the result of voting irregularities masterminded by Richard Daley, then the mayor of Chicago.
And where is Obama’s home church, the headquarters of the pastor who seems to have more passion than political correctness?
Chicago.
That toddlin’ town.
Then again, I’ve been bombarded lately with a more frequent than usual awareness of all things Chicago.
Life is still being cruel to me.
But, I promised not to wander off the point for long.
Yeah, as if.
The pundits and politicos are, obviously, all over the issue of whether Obama’s denunciation of the things his pastor said while stopping short of denouncing his pastor will be sufficient to satisfy those who were/are offended by what the pastor had to say.
We probably wont know until Election Night.
Because voters who are well read and/or thoughtful and/or reflective and/or tuned in to the process will probably make up their mind pretty quickly and answer the poll questions accordingly.
And those who are not so well read and/or thoughtful and/or reflective and/or tuned in to the process will probably adopt a wait and see attitude and that, too, will be reflected in the polls over the next few days or weeks.
That leaves the idiots.
And you never know what the idiots are going to do until they do it.
And that pretty much means Election Day.
After being alive long enough to have actually “witnessed” twelve presidential campaigns (I actually don’t start counting until 1960 when I was nine cause before that I was more aware of Popeye than politics), my take is that, for now, it wont really sway people drastically in either direction.
People who back Barack will continue to back Barack
People who hail Hillary will continue to hail Hillary.
And the idiots wont be coming out of the woodwork until November.
The discussion, though, will be about race.
It just wont be so much about race as it applies to whether or not a black man can be elected president this time around.
It will be about race as it applies to the “shocking” discovery, made this week by a big old chunk of white middle class America, that black people, in a large numbers, are still pretty pissed off about the way they’ve been treated for the past three hundred plus years in this country and see nothing unusual about sitting in their local pew on Sunday morning, nodding their heads in agreement as the spiritual leader of their church spouts political and, undeniably, inflammatory rhetoric at his parishioners.
Praise the Lord!
And damn whitey!
I have a feeling that the Obama campaign is glad, in a practical way, that the cork is out of the bottle and the dialogue/debate can begin in earnest.
What’s remarkable, though, is that the dialogue/debate has suddenly shifted away from what was once the predictable slant.
The question of whether this country is ready to elect a black man President of the United States.
Turns out that this little twist of the plot has provided an unexpected, double whammy when it comes to what part race still plays, not just in this campaign, but in our everyday lives.
Obviously, Obama’s support and success has shown us how far we’ve come.
And Obama’s pastor has shown us far we still have to go.
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