by John McWhorter

Cass Sunstein is misinterpreting my piece in the New York Sun about Obama as implying that Obama has demonstrated no brilliance or talent in his career and is yet being promoted as a possible president. However, my point is more specific: The excitement that Obama's possible candidacy elicits among most people, including many of those suggesting that he run, is not based on the detailed knowledge of Obama's abilities and achievements that Sunstein has been privy to. When someone says "Barack Obama for president" and the rooms erupts with applause, the chances are slight that what is driving those hands to clap is Obama's feats on the state level or how well he presided over the Harvard Law Review. It is because of something else about him, and I submit that the key something else is his color. My point is also, to be clear, that this buzz has arisen so very soon. I maintain that a white senator with the same abilities would not be remotely likely to generate Obama's buzz so soon, and that this is because he is black. In other words, in reply to Sunstein's "McWhorter cannot possibly think that skin color is a sufficient condition ... for the enthusiasm Obama attracts," I indeed think precisely that--in terms of the degree and immediacy of said enthusiasm. My intention in putting that forth is not to assail Barack Obama as a lightweight, which clearly he is not. It is simply to examine whether or not a commitment to making certain gestural statements about race affects--while not wholly determining--how talented black people are viewed in our moment. Thus Sunstein notes that John McCain's candidacy was driven by his having been a POW in Vietnam. Yes, and candidacies quite often have gimmicks. JFK, who Sunstein compares Obama to, was telegenic and a good public speaker, for example. I'm not sure it's useful to bring in family connections a la the Bush and Gore dynasties as Sunstein does, as this would seem to be a different kind of issue (which would also bring us to JFK's father's dirty doings behind the scenes to help assure his son's victory). As such, though, Sunstein's remark that "it is uncharitable" to attribute Obama's success to "anything other than his ability and his character" does not quite follow from his acknowledgment of the role that gimmickry inevitably plays. My point is simply that Obama's gimmick--again, in terms of the attractiveness of his candidacy to the public at large and various operators much less informed about Obama (or reflective in general) than Sunstein--is his color. That is not intended as a dismissal of Obama, which I made clear in the column. It is, we could say, an attempt at an anthropological observation on where we are on race at this time. I closed the column saying that if Obama's gimmick happens to give him a pulpit to show that he would be a great candidate then I am quite pleased--which is rather different from Sunstein's implication, if I get him correctly, that I am simply dismissing Barack Obama, of all people, of being mere window dressing.