Warning: Change Election Being Hijacked!

For a long time, more or less two thirds of the American people indicated they believe the country is on the wrong course and needs to change direction. Nearly every poll has highlighted change as the electorate's principle concern. For the matter to now begin to turn on the question of whether or not we might elect a woman or a black man betrays the this well expressed concern, and the country's interests.

No one proposes that electing a black man will solve the problems of the economy, the Iraq War, and the leadership role America should pursue in the world after 9/11 - let alone the finding the right direction for the country. Nor is anyone proposing electing a woman President would accomplish those ends. Electing some particular woman, or some particular black man, perhaps, but that is another question.

So who is skewing the matter in the direction of race and gender?

Who would benefit?

Clearly the Republicans. A choice between a woman and John McCain, or between a black man and John McCain drains attention away from the real issues of concern. You can bet, in many and various ways the right wing media machine will echo with increasing force such attempts to reorient the debate. And of course our Main Stream Media will be all too easily suckered into aiding and abetting this ‘game’, not least because it fits in so readily with their flogging of the horse race aspect of elections.

In 1960 Kennedy famously offerd: I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am a candidate for President who happens to be Catholic. So now Hillary Clinton must not be the woman candidate for President of the United States, but a candidate for President of the United States who happens to be a woman, and Barack Obama must not become the black candidate for President, but a candidate for President who happens to be black To turn the debate on the point of race or gender turns it away from the question of the where the country is going and how it is to get there. The REAL concern of the electorate at this moment.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future