Gerry Ferraro is almost right- but not quite

1984 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is blaming the Obama campaign for the furor over her comment that if Barack Obama wasn't an African-American, he wouldn't be where he is today.

Her remark is almost on target. True enough, Obama is still in the third year of his first term in the U.S. Senate- a great deal more of which has been spent running around the country being a "rock star" than taking care of business in Washington. Obama's resume for the White House effectively consists of his tenure in the Illinois State Legislature!

But it's not primarily Obama's race that has made this absolutely unqualified candidate such a hot commodity. It's his eloquence and charisma- with the addition, of course, of the media's adulation. The degree to which his race facilitates the fashionability of that adulation among the liberal media is, of course, another question.

Obama's remark that if he were picking a route to the White House it wouldn't include being born black is, to a degree, a valid response to the specific form Ferraro's criticism took. Of course, whether Obama's path takes him to the White House remains to be seen, and "where (Obama) is now" isn't necessarily the role of president-in-waiting. "Where he is now" is that he is a much fawned-over media celebrity who has experienced success in the Democratic primaries and caucuses out of all proportion to his qualifications to be president.

The most that can be said about the role of Obama's race in this process is that it facilitates that adulation by appealing to the media's liberal guilt.

ADDENDUM: Kathleen Parker does a riff on this theme here.

Comments