An Election That's Anything But Black and White ...

Maybe it's all the time I've spent talking politics over the past few weeks, or maybe it's that I'm fully dialed into the election now. Whichever it is, Obama, McCain and the politics of race is the subject of my October Times column. Here's a preview:

Finally, the 4th of November looms and this endless season of sanctimony draws close to its conclusion. The polling and the crowning of a victor come not one hour too soon. For all the talk of history being made in this election cycle, first black this, first female that, the landmark that stands tallest to me is a new pinnacle of false piety from both sides.

Let me be abundantly clear here: For months I have examined both candidates, the combustible chameleon from Arizona and the cardboard cutout from Illinois, and for all that analysis I have come to feel that little more than a coin flip separates the two senators in terms of qualification to lead this country. Whoever wins, if there comes a 4 a.m. soon when the White House phone rings, I'm rooting for it to go straight through to voice mail.

You want a prediction? I feel confident I can pick a loser between Obama and McCain.

America. We are the poorer for having lived through Election 2008.

The funny thing is, the candidates haven't been the worst part of this billion-dollar beauty pageant. The two senators remind me of the renegade zoo lion who mauls his trainer suddenly one morning: They're just predators being predators. It's the gawkers at this zoo who I've found all the more insufferable. Republicans, Democrats, Obama lovers, passengers and conductors on the McCain Straight Talk Express, the media elite, the talk show blatherers – it's hard to imagine any of these folk know how shrill they sound, how much like bleating sheep, baa-baa-baaing their self-professed intellectual and moral superiority.

Anymore in 21st century America, people no longer seem able to simply disagree on politics. Now to hold an ideological opinion is akin to holding down a perch on Mount Olympus. You love the view where you are. Everyone else is beneath you, the masses not fit to breathe the same air.

A holier-than-thou tone has been everywhere this campaign season, most especially when the subject turns to race. I write this screed with a new poll from the Associated Press ringing in my ears, and with these opening paragraphs fresh in my head:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about 2.5 percentage points.

The net impact of prejudice in this race, according to the poll?

Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.

Excuse me while I go take a shower to wash off the self-righteousness that underlies that assumption.

What do I find so objectionable about this study, besides its potential divisiveness, flimsy math and lack of anything resembling courage? Only this: Its inherent racism.

Nowhere did the pollsters seek to measure the impact of skin color on this campaign in a 360-degree way. Nowhere did they ask the sorts of questions truly color-blind scientists would have asked: Like what percentage of blacks are voting for Obama based on race alone? Or what percentage of blacks have sworn off McCain as too melanin-deprived for their taste? And, even more interestingly, what percentage of whites find themselves leaning toward Obama not for his stands on Iraq or on abortion rights, but because they want to feel good about their open-mindedness, positive about their race-neutral ways, by virtue of their having cast a vote for a man whose skin tone bears so little resemblance to their own?

Of course race has played a role in this election. I'd be a fool to deny it, just as you would be a fool to assume that race can do nothing more than harm Obama. But foolishness is what you get when those who can at best only assume confuse their capacity to take a flying guess with the ability to peer deep into the electorate's soul.

Not to beat the metaphor of color into the ground here, but if there's one hue that defines the election of 2008 it isn't skin color or red states versus blue states, it's all the various shades of gray. Just as it's impossible to fully predict what's in a candidate's heart, it's similarly impossible to predict why any one voter makes any one choice once the curtain closes and it's time to punch chads.

Is it possible that the bigotry of a handful of American whites will keep Obama from the presidency? Without a doubt, just as it's possible that his race is – for a different handful of voters on the first Tuesday in November – the very best reason to vote for the man.

To me, the question was never black and white, never black nor white, never really about skin tone at all. For whom to vote is simply one more query with no good answer in a country where everyone seems to hold their own version of the truth as the word of God.

Somewhere down the line, maybe we'll all stop asking which side we're on and instead wonder aloud about why we were so sure in the first place.

Well, at least no one will be left wondering how I really feel, huh?