Will the 2012 election be more historic than the 2008 one?
It wasn't that I really had doubts. I believed strongly- and still do- that McCain was several orders of magnitude more qualified than Barack Obama to be president, and that his policies would be much, much better for the country. In fact, several months earlier, I had stood before my neighbors at my precinct caucus and urged them to join me in supporting. Sen. McCain's nomination. My route to the McCain camp hadn't been either direct or easy; I had spent brief periods of time supporting Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee before deciding that each was lacking in some critical way. But once I'd settled in the McCain camp, I had no doubts whatsoever that he was the best choice available. I still don't.
But as I stood there in the voting booth back on that November afternoon, just for a moment, the historical significance of the decision I was about to participate in got to me. I was about to vote in an election which would probably result in an African-American becoming President of the United States- an eventuality which I could barely have imagined only a year before.
I hesitated. It struck me how much it would mean to African-Americans, and to a country whose history has been so blighted by slavery and discrimination and racism of every description, for a black man to live in the White House. I was so conscious of the importance of the moment that I was moved to weigh, at the last possible instant, all my concrete disagreements with Barack Obama and all my concrete agreements with John McCain against the abstract significance of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help make a black man president.
The moment passed. I vaguely sensed that there would be something patronizing in my voting for a man I regarded as unqualified and with whose program I so thoroughly disagreed because of the color of his skin. I voted for McCain after all, and I do not regret that decision.
But I wonder whether an even more historic moment might be possible next year. Herman Cain, CEO of Godfather's Pizza and former chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, is also an African-American. He is running for president as a Republican. He has been given little chance of winning by most people, including me. Yet in the two most recent polls, Cain has finished fourth in the race for the nomination, with numbers more impressive than Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, or any other candidate than Romney, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani.
This moment, too, may pass. But just for an instant, I'm led to contemplate the fact that it isn't entirely beyond the realm of possibility that next year might see a moment even more historic than the election of Barack Obama.
Next year might see a presidential election in which both candidates are African-American. And what a kick in the teeth that would be to the racism of our American past and present!
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