Obama and race

A reader sent me this article in Newsweek. Here's the intro:

[Cornel] West asked Obama how he understood the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and interrogated him about a single phrase in Obama's 2004 Democratic-convention speech: that America was "a magical place" for his Kenyan father. "That's a Christopher Columbus experience," West said. "It's hard for someone who came out of slavery and Jim Crow to call it a magical place. You have to be true to yourself, but I have to be true to myself as well." A few weeks later, the two men met in a downtown Washington, D.C., hotel to chat about Obama's campaign staff. Just a month after ripping into him onstage, West endorsed Obama and signed up as an unpaid adviser.

The article continues:

Officially, Obama became the earliest presidential candidate to get Secret Service protection because he's attracting such huge crowds. But NEWSWEEK has learned that a key factor in that decision was a string of racist e-mails sent to his Senate office, something his staff is unwilling to discuss publicly for security reasons.

That kind of overt hatred is not visible on the campaign trail. Many of Obama's supporters are enthralled by the content of his character—by his earnest desire to heal the nation's political divisions and to restore America's reputation in the world. Many also are excited by the color of his skin and the chance to turn the page on more than two centuries of painful racial history.

It gives a quote from the Democrat who beat Obama in the 2000 primary for Illinois' first district congressional seat, Bobby Rush.

Rush supports Obama's run for the White House today, but still rails against a "bourgeois elite" in the country that would "rather have a Harvard-trained, smooth-talking, forever-smiling, nonthreatening African-American" than someone like himself. Yet Rush also recognizes that Obama has a rare ability to work comfortably in different worlds.

In toto this peice paints Obama as transcending race. For the opposite view, see Steve Sailer's take on Obama's past, which challenges this notion. Sailer bases this opinion on his reading of Obama's books. But this is not something the vast majority of voters will do, or even media people. What matters, at least for the campaign, is the image he projects now. That of transcending race is an attractive one, at least for white voters. As the article notes, it is certainly a tightrope. But one in which Obama has navigated successfully so far.

The other motif of the article is Obama as a "uniter not a divider." This was so successful for candidate Bush in 2000, in a nation divided over Clinton's presidency. This holds real promise for Obama. If I were the campaign, I'd emphasize this over the transcending race asset. Consider the competition. Edwards is tacking hard left in order to distinguish himself. "Two Americas" is not a unifying theme. And then you have Richardson and Clinton, both from the Clinton administration. Hillary certainly divides people. That's the message to push and push and push for the Obama camp. Let other people talk about the candidate's race.