Mr. Whiteside

A comment suggests that too much is being made of Obama's recent slip-up, and that it has undeservingly knocked Hillary Clinton's grossly exaggerated (and repeated) tales of being shot at in Bosnia out of the news cycle. A great point, and certainly one of many reasons to believe that the endless campaign for president reduces everyone - candidates, media, voters - to numb, dull-witted versions of their actual selves.

The point I was trying, and perhaps failed, to make, is that in the past few decades Democratic candidates - and, in fact, left-leaning candidates in countries like Canada - have had trouble connecting with voters because they haven't found a way to express their ideas in ways that aren't condescending. Voters seem to have much more time for the candidate or party whose policies actually hurt them than they do for the candidate or party whose policies are better, but are explained in a "Father knows best" kind of way. Whether or not Obama's "cling" comments will hurt him (and most polls so far seem to show the damage isn't that bad), he must be wary of coming across as too superior. This has been the downfall of too many bright candidates in the recent past.

P's Blog also suggests that "biracial" is a more accurate description of Obama than "black" or "African-American," which, of course, is true. But isn't it fair to say that in Western culture, the experience of being biracial (black/white, specifically) is much more similar to the black experience than the white experience? For example, having Kansas roots isn't going to keep the police officer who can clearly see your Kenyan side from pulling you over for no reason.

I'm not so cynical that I think most Americans will make their electoral choices based on race, but I do suspect that, like most people of mixed-race, Obama's life and candidacy have probably been more defined by his "black side" than his "white side." I'd also bet that more people perceive him as black than as white, or as biracial for that matter.