did I mention he's an ass?

Obama said,

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" [see American Thinker's eloquence on the "Preemptive Race Bomb."]

It takes a certain amount of creativity to make one's skin color a theme for a Presidential campaign. But ultimately it's destructive: it distracts from genuine concerns and divides loyalties by sowing baseless mistrust among people.

And what does this man know about racism? He is not descended from American slaves. Raised not on the mean streets of Harlem, but the sunlit, palm-lined boulevards of Hawaii, he loafed in high school, smoked pot with his buddies in college, and on the strength of an apparently above-average intellect, a silver tongue, and not without a boost from racial quotas, negotiated Harvard. A rather privileged life, if you ask me.

Does Mr. Obama have any business telling you that anyone who isn't smitten with him probably isn't because he's black? This is that backhanded creativity at work. What credentials do you present us with, Mr. Obama? What qualities of character, what record of courageous leadership, do you bring to the table? His rhetoric on the issues that matter is nearly silent, drowned out by the clamor of the idea that you should be smitten with him because...because... well, apparently because he's black. Is that enough?

As a political animal, I classify him as decidedly Clintonesque. I happen to think Bill Clinton is real white trash. So much for racism.

There may be plenty of reasons to be afraid of making a[nother] silver-tongued slacker the commander in chief of the United States of America. None of them has to do with the color of his skin. His penchant for making that his defining characteristic, on the other hand, that is something, if not to fear, certainly to mistrust.

Self-respecting people don't respect shameless self-promoters, class-victimizers, or other confidence men. I think Barack Obama is an ass, precisely because he's an ass; not because he's black. I also think that ambitious politicians whose habitual accusations of their opponents are historically associated with violence and social disorder are plainly unfit for leadership and potentially dangerous.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently reminded us, the content of one's character needn't be defined by the color of his skin. If one dared to take a poll of the American people that asked them to select from a number of great Black Americans the one they would like to see become President, it is likely that Mr. Obama's race theme would be handily sunk. Because there are many Black Americans more fit to lead, on the strength of their characters, then Barack Obama is. Americans know this.

And speaking of Dr. King, he also suggested that people could "overcome" an unjust experience. And as a result perhaps be of stronger character, having a more creative, uplifting influence and empathy for the struggles of others. These are marks of a true leader. Black Americans have overcome, and have the sort of character of refined gold that suffering true injustice, like slavery and racism, produces.

But Mr. Obama is not heir to that legacy. He is an heir of privilege. Flogging an imagined injustice doesn't form character. It corrupts it. It's a counterfeit, and it can't be trusted.