The Effect of Race in the US Presidential Election

I like to think I'm post-racial, and I also like to think the US election has progressed beyond considerations of race. But this comment by Realista over at Boston.com has startled me into understanding just how potent a factor race still is.

Essentially, it's a set of hypothetical questions - what if certain characteristics of Sen. Obama and his Republican opposite numbers (McCain and Palin) had been switched around? Would people still look at the two candidates the same way?

I'm going to repeat those questions verbatim here, because they're so hard-hitting:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn’t read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes? (My note: I understand it was 3 planes, not 7)

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama’s family had made their money first bootlegging, then from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

Amazing, isn't it? Any or a small set of the negative aspects of McCain/Palin might have ended Obama's candidacy prematurely if they had been his flaws. Conversely, any of the positive things about Obama might have been trumpeted far more loudly had it applied to McCain/Palin.

What's often said about women (i.e., that they have to work twice as hard as a man to get the same recognition) may also apply to minorities.

I'm afraid we're still in Kansas, Toto.

Sarah Palin - On Second Thoughts...

My first reaction when I read about Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's running mate was cynicism. I felt it was an unabashedly sexist move by the Republican campaign, essentially calling across to disenchanted Democratic women voters, "Don't cry over Hillary, we've got a woman here now. Vote for us!"

I've since read a bit more about Gov. Palin, and I feel a grudging admiration. Even factoring out the sexist manipulation, John McCain probably couldn't have done better in his choice. The Alaskan governor seems the genuine article, all right. She's the maverick that McCain only pretends to be, and her short track record as Governor already shows that she goes after results without caring for the party establishment or cosy arrangements between power-brokers.

I'm ambivalent on abortion, as I've said before. I think abortion is a bad thing but I also believe it shouldn't be made illegal (because that'll only drive it underground, which is worse). Gov. Palin is a conservative and opposes abortion. Unlike many others who merely talk the talk, she and her husband have been in the extremely painful situation of having had to make the choice when their unborn child was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. They stuck to their principles and had the baby. It's not for us to argue the wisdom of their decision. What it says to me is that she walks the talk.

Another son of hers is to serve in Iraq soon, which bolsters her patriotic credentials. That should stand in contrast to others in her party who avoided serving in Vietnam. Again, we can debate the wisdom of the war itself, but no fingers can be pointed at Gov. Palin on the grounds of keeping her own family safe while others' kids are sent off to fight.

The only thing that repels me personally is her lifetime membership of the National Rifle Association. Alignment with the gun lobby to me suggests a fundamental flaw in one's approach to life. A president with that trait may perhaps be just that bit more willing to choose a military option over a diplomatic one. After 8 years of adventurism springing from precisely such an approach to life, can the world afford any more?

But for better or worse, she's here now, and Obama-Biden have a real fight on their hands. This is shaping up to be the most exciting US election in recent times. At a time when Obama has been softening his message to appeal to the centre, McCain has revolutionised his campaign by importing a true maverick (i.e., not necessarily one who goes against Conservative dogma but one who ignores the political establishment of the day and its backroom deals, which takes a lot of courage). If anything should happen to old man McCain after a possible Republican victory, she'll be the one minding the store. From what I've read of her so far, she wouldn't hesitate to demolish the Bush legacy.

Perhaps (dare one say it?), Sarah Palin is now the one who represents change we can believe in?

Update (Oct 2008): I still admire Sarah Palin for her remarkable personal qualities of toughness, strong will and high achievement, but after watching her performance over the past few weeks, I also think she's a fruitcake. She's a right-wing religious nut who believes that a pastor's prayers cleared the way for her election to the governor's office in Alaska. She reminds me of the paranoid Brigadier in Dr. Strangelove who had weird beliefs in vital essences and held onto conspiracy theories about fluoridated water. I wouldn't at all be comfortable with her sitting in the White House with her finger on the 'nucular' trigger. Who knows what God would tell her to do?

Sarah Palin - Now why would McCain choose her?

I'll be blunt. Sarah Palin has a good reputation as a new broom who swept Alaska clean, but that's not why McCain chose her as his Veep.

Cynical as always, the political machine (and yes, this is a bipartisan trait) has picked the candidate with the best potential to bring in the votes, never mind how.

McCain's campaign calculates that there are millions of seething women out there who are frustrated at their favourite candidate Hillary Clinton's defeat in the Democratic primaries. Not to put too fine a point on it, they're counting on sexism to bring those disaffected voters to the Republican side. They're gambling that millions of women will put aside issues of party affiliation, policies and plans, and vote purely on the issue of gender.

I hope they're proved wrong. It would be terrible if sexism turns out to be a winning strategy.