Obama. The much more important question is

whether Obama is ready for America and even more

important is whether black people can afford

Obama. Let’s look at it in the context of a historical

tidbit.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson, signing a contract with

the Brooklyn Dodgers, broke the color barrier in

major league baseball. He encountered open racist

taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team players

and even some players on his own team. Despite that,

his first year batting average was .297. He led the

National League in stolen bases and won the firstever

Rookie of the Year Award. Without question,

Jackie Robinson was an exceptional player. There’s

no sense of justice that should require that a player

be as good as Jackie Robinson in order to be a rookie

in the major leagues but the hard fact of the matter,

as a first black player, he had to be.

In 1947, black people could not afford a stubble

bum baseball player. By contrast, today black people

can afford stubble bum black baseball players. The

simple reason is that as a result of the excellence of

Jackie Robinson, as well those who immediately followed

him such as Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe,

Larry Doby and Roy Campanella, there’s no one in

his right mind, who might watch the incompetence

of a particular black player, who can say, “Those

blacks can’t play baseball.” Whether we like it or not,

whether for good reason or bad reason, people make

stereotypes and stereotypes can have effects.

For the nation and for black people, the first black

president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson

and Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama has

charisma and charm but in terms of character, values

and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. By

now, many Americans have heard the racist and anti-

American tirades of Obama’s minister and spiritual

counselor. There’s no way that Obama could have

been a 20-year member of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s

church and not been aware of his statements.

Wright’s racist and anti-American ideas are by no

means unique. They are the ideas of many leftist professors

and taught to our young people. The basic

difference between Sen. Obama, Wright and leftist

professors is simply a matter of style and language.

His Philadelphia speech demonstrated his clever style

where he merely changed the subject. The controversy

was not about race. It was about his longtime

association with such a hatemonger and whether he

shared the Reverend’s vision.

Obama’s success is truly a remarkable commentary

on the goodness of Americans and how far

we’ve come in resolving matters of race. I’m 72 years

old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real

chance at becoming the president of the United States

was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly

won primaries in states with insignificant black populations.

As such, it further confirms what I’ve often

said: The civil rights struggle in America is over and

it’s won. At one time black Americans did not have

the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans;

now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle

is over and won does not mean that there are not

major problems confronting many members of the

black community but they are not civil rights problems

and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

While not every single vestige of racial discrimination

has disappeared, Obama and the Rev. Wright are

absolutely wrong in suggesting that racial discrimination

is anywhere near the major problem confronting

a large segment of the black community. The major

problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent

education and a high rate of criminality. To confront

these problems, that are not the fault of the

larger society, requires political courage and that’s an

attribute that Obama and most other politicians lack.

of Barack Obama before a recent primary

election returns showed he had delivered a knockout

punch against Hillary Clinton. The young orator

who had seemed so fantastic beginning with his 2007

Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech in Iowa disappointed

even his own advisers over the past two weeks, and

old party hands mourned that they were stuck with

a flawed candidate.

The whipping Obama gave Clinton in North Carolina

and his near miss in Indiana transformed that

impression. The candidate who delivered the victory

speech in Raleigh, N.C., was the Obama of Des

Moines, bearing no resemblance to the gloomy,

uneasy candidate who had seemed unable to effectively

deal with bumps in the campaign road. Returning

to his eloquent call for unity, the victorious

Obama in advance dismissed Republican criticism of

his ideology or his past as the same old partisan bickering

that the people hate.

John McCain as the Republican candidate does

not like that kind of campaigning, either. But a gentlemanly

contest between the old war hero from out

of the past and the new advocate of reform from the

future probably would guarantee Democratic

takeover of the White House. The Republican Party,

suffering from public disrepute, faces major Democratic

gains in each house of Congress — leaving the

defeat of Obama as the sole GOP hope for 2008.

Republicans were cheered and Democrats distressed

by an inexperienced Obama’s ineptitude in

handled adversity the past month. The new Republican

consensus considered Obama the weaker of the

two Democratic candidates. Indeed, Hillary Clinton

had finally shaken off pretensions of entitlement and

consigned Bill Clinton to rural America, raising speculation

that she would decisively carry Indiana and

threaten Obama in North Carolina. Clinton’s failure

Tuesday was a product of demographics rather than

Obama’s campaign skill. Consistently winning over

90 percent of the African-American vote, Obama is

unbeatable in a primary where the black electorate is

as large as North Carolina’s (half the registered Democratic

vote there). Indiana differed from seemingly

similar Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Clinton scored

big wins, because it borders Obama’s state of Illinois,

with many voters in the Chicago media market.

As the clear winner and the presumptive nominee,

Obama in Raleigh Tuesday unveiled his general election

strategy. Dismissing McCain’s “ideas” as “nothing

more than the failed policies of the past,” Obama

denounced what he called the Republican campaign

plan: “Yes, we know what’s coming. ... We’ve already

seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on

everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas.”

Thus, Obama seems to be ruling out not only discussion

of his 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah

Wright but also any identification of the

Democratic presidential candidate as “liberal” or as

an advocate of higher taxes, higher domestic spending,

abortion rights and gun control. These issues

appear to be included in what Obama at Raleigh

called “attempts to play on our fears and exploit our

differences.”

The test of Obama’s strategy may be his friendship

with and support from William Ayers, an unrepentant

member of the Weatherman terrorist underground

of the 1960s. Instead of totally disavowing

Ayers as he belatedly did his former pastor Wright,

Obama potentially deepened his problem by referring

to Ayers as just a college professor — “a guy who

lives in my neighborhood.” He then compared their

relationship with his friendship with conservative

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, as he had compared

Wright’s racism with his white grandmother’s.

Democrats abhor bringing up what Obama calls

Ayers’ “detestable acts 40 years ago,” but it will be

brought into the public arena even if it is not

McCain’s style of politics. A photo of Ayers stomping

on the American flag in 2001 has been all over

the Internet this week. That was the year Obama

accepted a $200 political contribution from Ayers

18

and the year in which the former Weatherman said:

“I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do

enough.”

While McCain will demand no response from

Obama, others will. How the prospective nominee

handles this in the future will help define whether he

is seen as flawed or fantastic in the long campaign

ahead.

Mr. Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans-

Novak Political Report, a political newsletter he founded in