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Race and Politics

Editorial, The New York Times
January 17, 2008

After watching the subject of race intrude on the primaries last week, and become even more prominent this week, we were relieved that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama called a truce Tuesday night.

The last thing Americans need is a loony debate over whether it is more important to choose the first woman or the first African-American nominee for president. That threatens to alienate voters more than they are already and obscures the fact that an American party actually managed to create that choice.

The presence of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton should have made talk of race or gender academic. But Mr. Obama seized the mantle of change and upset Mrs. Clinton in Iowa in part by drawing away her support among women. By the time the campaigns got to New Hampshire, the Clinton team was panicking. Mrs. Clinton had to win or risk being out of the primaries entirely.

It was clearly her side that first stoked the race and gender issue. Mrs. Clinton mentioned in a debate in New Hampshire that a woman president would be a change for America. It was an offhand comment, and obviously true. But the next day, at events we attended, Mrs. Clinton’s surrogates were pushing hard the line that a woman president would be “the real” change.

Mrs. Clinton followed up with her strange references to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson — and no matter how many times she tried to reframe the quote, the feeling hung in the air that she was denigrating America’s most revered black leader.

Then the staff and surrogates got involved. Mr. Obama’s team circulated lists of supposedly racially insensitive quotes from Mrs. Clinton. Her staff and supporters, including the over-the-top former President Bill Clinton, went beyond Mrs. Clinton’s maladroit comments — and started blaming Mr. Obama for the mess.

Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, compared Mr. Obama to Sidney Poitier’s character in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” — a black man trying to insert himself into white society. Representative Charles Rangel of New York said that Mr. Obama had said some “absolutely stupid” things.

Usually, candidates in these situations say they cannot control their supporters. (Remember President Bush’s refusal to repudiate the sliming of John McCain in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.) And, sadly, both of the current Democratic candidates talked Tuesday night about “overzealous” staff and “uncontrollable” supporters.

But they condemned the talk of race and said they wanted it to stop. We will soon see how sincere they were, and how controllable their people are.

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