(8). His make up as one from multiple backgrounds and his actions - never actually disparaging his opponents as when he defended HC on Bosnia makes it believable that he might be able to bring people together compared to those that think fighting is a virtue.
(9). He has gotten it right more often recently than his opponents - on what would happen in Iraq, to his judgment on Pakistan, and to now the gas tax which even republican economists agreed was bad policy and also Bloomberg called stupid.
- Yes he has made mistakes but they are all consistent with the overall personality that is emerging by his own testimony and not the words of others (including the mistake of giving Wright a chance to sting him by including him in the general discourse on race in America, being too soft on HC in debates and not attacking in kind or using her scandals against her, or in trying to psychoanalyze or explain why rural voters might not be supporting him with the bitter gaffe). One thing at least you can evaluate what you have in front of you more than the more ???experienced??? or dishonest politicians.
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See the Brown in Us
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Much has been said about Hispanic disinterest in the Obama candidacy. My unsolicited advice to Obama is this: talk to Hispanics as a brown man who has made his way through a black and white America. We would understand you better if you understood your story in ours. For centuries, Latin America has acknowledged brown. The majority population of Mexico has been, since the 18th century, mestizo or mixed. In Brazilian Portuguese, there is a long list of words to describe brown. In America we've had only two—white and black.
America has become a global society. You can go to any large suburban high school in Los Angeles or Atlanta and see the proof. There are students from India and Peru and Laos and Egypt. They have come because the American Dream is potent. Sure, there are separate cafeteria tables. But there is also flirting and unlikely friendships being formed. A young woman from Kansas falls in love with a visiting student from Kenya. In any American family I can name, there are cousins and in-laws of several races. There are grandchildren who do not look exactly like any of their grandparents. And many families have adopted a child from China or Guatemala. Or Bangladesh.
In this world, the political necessity is for someone who might help us imagine lives larger than racial designations. A politician might win the day, if he or she were able to speak of the ways our lives are mixed.
Rodriguez is the author of “Brown: The Last Discovery of America.”
© 2008
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