The Black Guy, the Woman And the Geezer Audition;

Profiling the Candidates
The Black Guy, the Woman And the Geezer Audition


If anything has been made obvious in this presidential election year, it's that the American electorate has a unique opportunity to show its commitment to the holy trinity of EEO - race, gender and age - by either choosing a black guy, a woman or a geezer to be the next president.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.

Interestingly enough, the self-described "white guy," John Edwards, withdrew his application. But then again, he was the weakest of the three major Democratic job contenders. Perhaps he bought into the argument made by some white men about the plight of other white men competing against a woman and a person of color for our country's top job. That is, claiming "minority" status is considered an advantage.

What has become disturbingly clear to me in the race for the White House is that one of the benefits of Hillary Clinton being a "minority" (the woman in the race) is her being the white woman in the group. After all, Ms. Clinton asserted to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by "hard-working Americans, white Americans," and that her opponent, the black guy (Barack Obama), just can't cut it with that crowd.

In Ms. Clinton's mind, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert puts it, the emerging message is: "He can't win! Don't you understand? He's black! He's black!"

A Free Pass for Dems

Amazingly, we tend to willingly give the Democrats a pass based on such issues of racial diversity more so than Republicans. However, we should think twice before engaging in any partisan gloating around diversity. A fifth-year comparison of the Clinton and Bush (Dubya) Administrations' appointments of minorities revealed that minorities received 24 percent of the positions under Clinton and 13 percent under Dubya. But here's the thing: according to NYU professor of government Paul C. Light, even though the Clinton administration had more blacks than the Bush Administration, they were generally low-ranking appointments.

Call me cynical, but I am unconvinced that a third Clinton term and Hillary's administration will reflect America's diversity.

It is my considered opinion that most voters weigh at least three factors in deciding the candidate they support: 1) the candidate's ideological position, 2) likeability (i.e., personal attributes), and 3) momentum - where the race is going. Surprisingly, Senator Obama has exceeded the expectations of many, including this observer. Indeed, while Hillary has slain her thousands, Barack has slain his tens of thousands - both in popular votes and donors' contributions.

This notwithstanding, one can reasonably conclude that it's hard out here for a brother running to answer the red phone at 3 o'clock in the morning. Senator Obama's use of the b-word, "bitter," in his mangled remarks to describe small-town America as "clinging" to God and guns conveniently inspired a "silly season" among his two increasingly hard-to-distinguish opponents.

Only in America

Unable to contain her enthusiasm to capitalize on Obama's word choices, Hillary Clinton - who with her husband earned a combined $109 million during the past seven years - sweetly strutted into a local bar in Pennsylvania, called in the cameras, swilled some cheap, blended whiskey and reminisced about her childhood shooting at ducks and, presumably, drag-racing hot-wired Chevys.

Meanwhile, John McCain - son of a U.S. Navy admiral and husband of the heiress to and chairwoman of a $300-million-a-year Anheuser-Busch subsidiary - took the occasion to sanctimoniously offer his own condemnations of elitism.

How is it possible that two of the most elite figures in national politics could jump all over a black man of Obama's variety, raised by a single white mom, who worked his way into Harvard and into a national candidacy of "elitism''?

Truth be told, black men are given very little wiggle room for errors. Reaching for one's wallet can be construed by the police as reaching for a gun; sitting in your city-issued vehicle even as the highest-ranking black (a three-star Chief) in the NYPD can be classified as threatening by white subordinates. Bluntly speaking, some black men are perceived to be a threat to whites by merely breathing while black. Similarly, some professionally competent women are perceived to be a threat to some men; certainly older and more experienced workers are seen as a threat to inept and unscrupulous bosses.

Maureen Dowd, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, wrote, "Just as Obama spent his youth trying not to be threatening, so as not to unnerve whites, Hillary spent her life learning to be threatening ... as Obama learned to accommodate, the accommodating Hillary learned to triangulate and lacerate. As he learned that following the rules can get you far with adoring mentors, she learned from Bill and Dick Morris and Mark Penn that following the rules was for saps."

Revealingly, no fewer than 50 percent of Democratic primary voters in a recent exit poll considered Ms. Clinton "honest and trustworthy." Let's not kid ourselves - integrity in leadership matters. Regrettably, all politicians lie to some degree or another. And the dynamics of a presidential campaign are such that all candidates must stretch, trim or embellish the truth. Even so, Hillary Clinton flat-out lied about sniper fire she didn't experience. The anecdote she repeated, again and again and again, was consciously fabricated. And it took a clown like Sinbad to blow the whistle on her.

What's She Smoking?

Like beauty, the meaning of numbers is in the eyes of the beholder. Mathematically speaking, according to most political observers, the game is over. As of this writing, Clinton is lagging behind Obama in delegates and popular votes. Maybe, unlike Bill, she inhales. After all, Ms. Clinton is convinced, at least on the surface, that she would be a stronger and better qualified Democratic candidate against the Republican presumptive nominee, John McCain.

It should come as no surprise that I have my own take on her "experience" argument. After all, by now you are used to my musings on the BS that accompanies my agency's definition of job qualifications. For example, we are encouraged to believe that white men without college degrees, former Highway Repairers, are unpretentiously "qualified" to serve as the Executive Director of Engineering Units (of course with the caveat that their responsibility is simply "administrative"). It is no wonder then that there is a real belief among many blacks that such qualifications are unique to the superior work ethic of being a "hard-working American, white American."

Ultimately, lurking beneath the surface of the qualification argument is whether John McCain's age and life experiences as a war veteran makes him the best-qualified to answer the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning. Interestingly enough, Senator Obama's glib use of the phrase "losing his bearings" in reference to Senator McCain was seen by the Republican's camp as a jab about McCain's age - he's 71. While, in my view, there is nothing remarkable about McCain being the geezer in this race, what is remarkable is that despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war with most Americans, the straight talk from McCain is to bomb Iran. Unfortunately, such leadership mindset reminds me of the Ibo proverb - ''Beware of strangers who cry louder than the bereaved."