SKIN-DEEP POLITICS

If Obama could make Muslim terrorists drop their hatred of America, I'd be the first in line to vote for him. But did people of color feel they were "proven wrong about America" by the Bush administration's two black Secretaries of State? Did Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice discover magical becalming abilities whenever they negotiated?

The Economist seconded Sullivan: "To many Americans, a black man who eschews both racial politics and the conservative-liberal divide is a chance to heal the country's two deepest divisions." But Obama's supporters don't eschew mentions of race; they rule it a major point in his favor. Is there a racial divide, with Obama leading in national polls against John McCain?

"His immediate effect on international relations could be dramatic," says The Economist. "A black president, partly brought up in a Muslim country, would transform America's image . . . America needs a dose of unity: Mr Obama has a rare ability to deliver it." Note the bumpy segue: from "black" to "has a rare ability."

Whether or not Barack Obama turns out to be a vastly skilled conciliator and healer, he did not receive these talents at birth. (And why do we call him black? It is equally true to say that he is white.)

The information that races automatically respect one another has not reached the Hutus who massacred Tutsis in Rwanda, the Indians and Pakistanis at nuclear-armed loggerheads over Kashmir or the Sunni and Shia in Iraq. Is it likely that radical Muslims who devote much creativity to slaughtering one another will forgive Obama for being a Christian and regard him as a sorta-kinda Muslim because he lived in Indonesia as a child?

The opinionated classes have a vision - that all non-white races see themselves as part of a unified bloc, that minorities have special gifts denied to whites, that you can get partial credit for a wrong answer - that bears no resemblance to world geopolitics. It's more like an Ivy League campus."

The 'experts' have it all wrong.

The closer one resembles someone, the more that someone holds him or her to a higher standard of like-minded thought.

Militant moslems kill other moslems more than anyone else. Unbelievers at least have an out, as they are, well, unbelievers, but someone raised in a moslem country should KNOW BETTER. So an Obama Chief Executive-ship could and probably would be as disastrous as virtually every black mayor-ship in the country has been.