The safest historical bet on the Obama administration is that scholars not yet born, unadorned with a speck of racial or political bigotry, will classify Mr. Obama’s run as the most brilliantly conceived and engineered campaign in the — by then — nearly 300 years of the Presidency.
Boosting an unknown politician with an undistinguished resume — but two autobiographical volumes in bookstores — from Middle Western obscurity to the White House in a slickly-greased year and a half campaign dwarfs even Mr. Lincoln’s unlikely rise.
Mr. Obama pulled off this trickiest of all feats by strategically using his race in a foolproof way that worked only to his advantage:
State the obvious.
Only on carefully chosen occasions.
In an understated manner that will be interpreted by the mostly pedestrian audiences as an oh-gosh throwaway line.
In fact, it was a scrupulously sculpted line that was a throwaway line the way that Michelangelo was a deputy house painter.
Maybe Someone Miusunderstood?
Does a nude person need to remind onlookers that he or she is undressed?
Mr. Obama’s deviously calculated tactic, which screamed Vote for Me Because I Am Different, was articulated as the exact opposite that was intended to showcase the candidate as radically self-effacing:
You May Have Noticed I Am Not Like Any Other Candidate You Have Seen.
The motivation: With evident subtlety, keep reminding the rubes that you are black, and the more you remind them, the faster you will build you will build support that is mountain high, either out of sympathy, guilt or parallel conviction.
One crucial, again understated, caveat was mandatorily attached. It was slid under the door:
Those who criticize candidate Obama are doing so not because they disagree with him on a policy position but because he is black. All criticism drips with varying degrees of racial bigotry.
There is no doubt in the minds of contemporary Presidential scholars that if Hillary had run against anyone else but Swish last year, she would be President Hillary.
Race and Me Go Together
Every step of his career, for 30 years and more, Swish has campaigned for office on a racial ticket.
Just keep gently jabbing the rubes in their ribs, is his mantra.
Always with subtlety.
The key word in that sentence is “always.” Never release the pressure.
I would estimate 95 percent of Obama voters checked his name because he was black.
This is not as extreme as it may sound. Most of the time, a certain characteristic about a Presidential candidatee will turn voters off or on, quite apart from policies he espouses. On that basis, he will win or lose their vote
What distinguishes Swish from all White House predecessors is that he has repelled criticism, as President, with the identical tactic so skillfully employed during the campaign — you are saying opposing my policy because I am black and you are a racist.
Every Republican who walks the earth in America has had that electrifying accusation swung at his mouth.
Mr. Obama, always accompanied by his racial antennae, has surrounded himself with similar thinkers, often but not exclusively black men and women who interpret all non-support as racially linked.
As a standard-issue Democrat/liberal, Swish specializes in fanning arcane generalities that sound holy.
But they can’t seriously be comprehended by more than 1 or 2 percent of Americans. I give you ,healthcare reform, global warming, the vaunted stimulus plan, global fighting, global mediation — generally, a redistribution of wealth more nakedly than his boldest Democrat predecessors.
Next time you see Swish, ask him to explain one of these initiatives in 10 clear sentences. If he can’t, you are a racist.
One of the top two refrains since Swish entered the White House is that many right-wingers, those conservatives he fears much more than his brother Muslims, are out to kill him.
No leader in the history of the world ever has been known such constant emotional heat.
No President, we have been told practically daily since Inauguration Day, has faced the assassination threats that confront at Swish every step.
All because Swish is black.
However, the myth was blown up yesterday, though it scarcely has been noted.
The director of the Secret Service, whose men are charged with guarding the President’s life every hour, testified yesterday before Congress that the claim is balderdash.
Swish — well, the director did not address the President as Swish — has attracted the same number of death threats as former President Bush and former President Clinton.
Oh.
