The Candidate

Wolcott says, "I question that a 'conversation' or dialogue on race is what the country wants or needs right now," his point being that people have some real concerns, it turns out, that get in the way of national edification. Now you could object that Obama sets up such a conversation as a kind of predicate for addressing the "real" problems: health care and "shuttered mills" and foreclosure and so on and so forth. There is not, however, any particular reason to believe that a transracial national coming-together is especially germane to achieving whatever it is we're supposed to achieve in this regard. I mean, there is already a broad, national, transracial consensus that the government ought to subsidize health care, that protectionist measures ought to be undertaken to keep companies from "shipping jobs overseas," and that the government ought to regulate the credit and mortgage industries more heavily and provide more money to more defaulting owners more immediately. A substantial majority holds these views. A transracial, bipartisan majority of voters. Of course, no one actually cares what voters want, only care how they vote, two entirely distinct and discrete categories.