The Election "Race"

Once again we're confronted with the most prescient and cutting remark ever uttered (or at least reported) during an election campaign.
The election I'm talking about is the 1993 Canadian federal election. Oh, my, how to place this in context for my American readership? Okay, I'll give it a go. Take Clinton (Bill, not Hillary)'s slickness, add Reagan's politics (and bear in mind that much of Canada is bluer than your bluest blue state), and add a generous helping of Dubya's obstinacy. Shake it all together and you get an approximation of Brian Mulroney: initially elected in a landslide, actually re-elected (and no, he didn't steal it)...but his popularity plummeted in his second term until it was practically zero. He retired from politics two and a half months before the election, leaving Kim Campbell in charge.
Kim Campbell...our first and only female PM...albeit never elected. She had the chance to resurrect her party's fortunes--we went through an orgy of self-congratulations that a female should hold our highest office...but then her inner Hillary started to show during the campaign. She was seen as condescending and aloof, and before long the chants came: "Kim, Kim, you're just like him!"
Condescending she was: she was also honest. Several times she noted--publicly, out loud--that there were things over which she had, and would have, little or no control. Most notably, she said that 47 days (then the length of our electoral campaigns--hey, America, take note) was not enough time to discuss the overhaul of social policy Ms. Campbell believed necessary. Unfortunately for Kim, a reporter took that and pithified it to "an election is no time to discuss serious issues".
That pseudo-quote sent shockwaves throughout the land. If you can't discuss serious issues during an election, went the thinking, just when the hell are you supposed to discuss them?

Kim's honesty alone didn't doom her, but it certainly helped. Campbell's party entered that election with 151 out of 295 seats...a thin majority. After the dust of the PC implosion settled, they found themselves with...get this...two seats. Yup, two.

Since then, nearly every election federal or provincial, I find myself musing over Campbell's infamous statement, as it was reported (and never corrected). And every time I re-confirm it.


I've been digesting Barack Obama's race speech, as if it was a meal. And I confess, at this late date, to some stomach upset.
Not a lot of it, mind you. Just a little. But given how overawed I was the first time I heard/read his words, "a little" is a little more than I had expected. And it's not what Obama said so much as that he said it at all.

The most controversial part of the speech concerned Rev. Jeremiah Wright...and I have no problem with the way Obama handled this. Indeed, my admiration for him skyrocketed after he disavowed his friend's remarks while standing by his friend. As he noted, the "politically expedient" thing to do would have been to cut and run. Perhaps it's some last remnant of "love the sinner but hate the sin" resonating in me, but I'm glad he didn't.

Obama's bitterest enemies will readily concede the man can weave webs of words. I'm a pretty fair public speaker myself, but my ability pales into utter insignificance put up against his. This speech, to my mind, is not Churchillian nor Lincolnesque, but only because today's rhetorical standards have slid a great deal. Placed in today's sound-bite-obsessed, instant-isn't-fast-enough culture, Obama's slow, deliberate, look-Ma-no-notes delivery is almost spellbinding. And the content of his oratory doesn't hurt, either.
Except.
Except an election is no time to discuss serious issues. And in American domestic policy today, there is no issue more serious than race.
Oh, it's not as if we're going to see another "Black Day In July" this year. But it seems as if everything down there is viewed through a racial prism. De facto segregation still exists; there is a wide disparity in income between white and black families, and a disturbing minority of predominantly black teens have embraced nihilism and the gangster...well, they call it a lifestyle. Deathstyle, more like.

Some, Obama among them, directly link this state of affairs with slavery--abolished in 1865, its last legal vestige was wiped off the books exactly a century later. Perhaps the ghost of Jim Crow still rides.
Many Republicans say this is bull, and anyone (black or white) living in poverty has a responsibility to lift themselves out, to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", as it were.

I used to agree with this latter sentiment until it occurred to me that many of these people can't afford boots. That said, there was a time when black children mostly knew their fathers. Now many of them don't. And believe me, that's not 'cause Daddy's off being somebody's slave.

The arguments are raging, pro and con, and like every other political argument these days, the sides are polarizing. It's ironic that Obama, who has built his whole campaign upon unity, should be falling victim in the polls to a speech that, while all about unity, has proven so divisive.

I like Obama, and think he would be good for America. I just wish he could have talked to Kim Campbell before he started campaigning. Try as Obama might, he can't avoid the question of race..and it's killing his hopes.