The other day in my car, I was listening to my favorite radio station, XM-radio's POTUS '08 (Politics of the United States), dedicated entirely to the 2008 political cycle. A media consultant named Thom Mozloom happened to be on the air analyzing the race. Mozloom wondered how a race with such an enormous gap in spending between Obama and McCain could still be close. His point was that given the money gap between the two candidates, Obama should be looking at a landslide victory. According to Mozloom, it was the campaign's media failings--questionable ad decisions by Obama and more importantly, gaffes by Joe Biden--that were keeping an election close "that should shake out to be a blow-out." 

I beg to differ with Mozloom's analysis. We live in a country that has been culturally and ideologically divided for decades. Barack Obama is a 47 year old African-American, who, when he first announced his candidacy in February of 2007, was given virtually no shot at winning the nomination, let alone the presidency. In small town America, journalists have repeatedly shown us that there are significant pockets of resistance to the idea of a president of color. The mere fact that Obama is poised to win this election is amazing. Blow-out? Possible, but unlikely. 

Just this week, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus visited a Walmart in Logan County, West Virginia, to examine citizens' views about Obama. Here is a sample of what she found:

"If I do vote, it will be Republican," said Charles Mount, a 31-year-old mechanic and registered Democrat. "There's just something about Obama. You hear so much about him being a Muslim. I don't personally believe that but I don't know that. I'm not going to take a chance on the leader of our country." "

"If Barack Obama gets in, it basically will be giving our America away to whatever . . . ," said Jamie Willis, 42, who voted for Clinton in the primary. Her husband, Brent Willis, 37, a contractor and registered Democrat, filled in the blank. "To be brutally honest with you, if Obama goes in there the [blacks] are going to go crazy -- and I'm not a prejudiced person."

Terry Sanders, a court clerk, said he "wouldn't vote for Obama if he was running for dog catcher. His values are completely different from mine. Why's he got a problem with the flag? He wouldn't put his hand over his heart. It casts a lot of doubt about what kind of man is this fellow."

Even more striking is Marcus' comment about these quotes:

These are not incendiary quotes cherry-picked from among multiple interviews or cajoled out of people reluctant to express a view. They came from the first eight people who stopped to answer my questions -- of whom just one said she supported Obama, citing the backing of the mineworkers union.

Obviously, Obama has had to face hurdles that no white presidential candidate would have to confront. If Obama were not black, the internet slurs--"he's a Muslim," "he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance," "he doesn't respect the flag," or more generally, in the parlance of Sarah Palin, "He doesn't see America the way we do"--would never have gained any traction whatsoever. The fact that two years into Obama's candidacy, these myths still exist, is best explained by Obama's wry comment, "I don't look like the other presidents on the currency."

Thom Mozloom's criticisms notwithstanding, for almost two years, Obama has run a terrific campaign with virtually no margin for error, no easy feat. To drive home this point, let's try a little thought experiment. Imagine for a moment that Obama carried with him the following baggage:

1) He finished fifth from the bottom of his class in college (McCain).

2) His spouse previously had a drug addiction that led her to steal drugs from her own medical foundation (McCain).

3) He has a daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock (Palin).

4) He has a spouse who for years belonged to group that advocated the secession of his home state from the Union (Palin).

5) He played an unethical role in a previous financial meltdown that cost the taxpayers billions (McCain).

Can you imagine what the right-wing attack machine would do with these facts? FOX News would be beating these issues to death. Well, actually they wouldn't, because no black candidate could survive a presidential race for five minutes with such baggage. The pregnant daughter alone would have people saying, "He's devaluing the presidency with his hip-hop values." That is why I would never saddle Obama with the expectation that "he should win by a landslide." If Obama gets 270 electoral votes, it will be the most remarkable accomplishment in American electoral history. It will be a seismic paradigm shift. The good news, however, is that once a new paradigm is created, it is amazing how we as a country adapt to it, even to the point of forgetting—or perhaps repressing—that the old paradigm ever existed. Let me expand on this point with a brief story:

In 1939, two African-American men, Clarence M. Davenport and Robert B. Tresville, entered West Point, among the first black men to have done so. Their presence evoked outrage. After all, who really believed that black men had the courage, intelligence, values or patriotism to assume such roles? While it was standard for cadets to be assigned roommates, Davenport and Tresville were not only not allowed to room with white cadets, they were also not allowed to room with each other. So each roomed alone. For four years they endured a form of treatment called "silencing," in which white cadets would not speak to them unless for official business. Even in the chapel, white cadets would not sit with them. When Life magazine came to take a picture of Davenport's graduating class, he was excluded from the picture.

Both men became model soldiers. In the 1960's, Davenport was given the Legion of Merit for his command of the 10th Artillery Group, 32nd Army Air Defense Command in Europe. and retired from the Army in 1972 as a full colonel. And Tresville? He became the commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen's 100th Fighter Squadron, and in 1944, was killed on a mission off the coast of Italy.

I mention these men for two reasons. The first reason is that they are great heroes, unsung heroes, men who created a new paradigm, a new narrative about our military. The military is now perhaps the most integrated institution in our country, and many Americans cannot even remember a time when blacks were shunned at West Point, and seen as lacking "good American values." The second reason is that Robert Tresville was married to my mom when his plane was lost over the Mediterranean Sea. It is because of the exploits of men like Tresville and Davenport that we now take for granted the Colin Powells of our nation.

Speaking of Powell, I agree completely with his assessment on Meet the Press that an Obama presidency will be "transformational." A world wide Gallup poll recently showed that three-quarters of the citizens in the 70 countries that they polled are hoping for an Obama presidency. This was true from Asia to Africa to Western Europe. In fact, Gallup only managed to find two countries where McCain was preferred: Georgia, and the Philippines.

This leads me to conclude that--in contrast to the overwrought warnings of Joe Biden--Obama will actually get the benefit of a global honeymoon period once he is elected. Temporarily at least, Al-Qaeda will be defanged, because it will become much harder to recruit terrorists when the American president is a role model in both developed and developing nations. When Obama is elected, black kids will start sitting up straighter in the classroom, and the notion that being studious is somehow "acting white," will lose all its destructive power. And instead of hearing the cynical and confused slogan, "I am Joe the plumber," we will hear children of all colors and creeds from all over the world saying, "I am Barack Obama, I am Barack Obama."