---

Never vote for candidates based on the colour of their skin.

I know - people do it all the time. But the fact is you can't think with your epidermis, and a politician can't think with his.

Sometimes your skin can unlock doors, or get you tossed out on the street. It can bump you up or down a pay grade.

But you can't win arguments with your skin, and it won't keep you cool in a crisis.

So it is with real relief - at least to those of us who believe the United States, Bermuda and the rest of this racially stressed-out world would really benefit from having a black person in the White House - that the best man for the job this year happens to be a black man.

But it's better than that. Most presidential elections are pretty murky and mixed up things: Although you might have a favourite candidate, each of the competitors has different strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and disasters.

So far, at least, Barack Obama has kept the scorecard pretty clean.

According to most opinion polls, he's managed to make sure that his campaign is widely viewed as more fair, honest and positive than his opponent's.

He has been the better orator.

He has "won" each of the debates.

The public has ranked him higher in dealing with the economy.

The public (at least by this stage of the campaign) trusts Obama more on most issues.

He has been the strongest at consulting others, as opposed to depending on his own instincts.

He has, by a large margin, the stronger and more experienced and most level-headed vice-presidential running mate.

He has, overwhelmingly, greater respect by people outside of the U.S.

These aren't just my opinions: These are widely-held views, backed up by poll after poll.

Not everybody is convinced of these things, of course. But the list of Obama's strengths is so long, and so widely-held among American voters, that it sends a very important message on race.

It makes it emphatically clear that Barack Obama isn't just some black man who happened to find himself in a remarkable situation by some bizarre fluke.

He is the front-runner because he deserves to be, by virtually any measure that anybody ever applies to U.S. presidential candidates.

Better yet, he is where he is almost entirely through his own talent, intelligence and ambition and not somebody else's. He wasn't the beneficiary of a huge scandal that consumed an opponent; he wasn't a vice-president whose boss had a heart attack.

Appeals to the King-like dream

Colin Powell, among many others has called Obama "transformational". He seems to fundamentally change the way many people think about politics, and the way many people think about U.S. presidents.

Many have also called him "post-racial". As the American commentator Juan Williams has noted, "the alienation, anger and pessimism that mark speeches from major black American leaders are missing from Mr. Obama's speeches.

"He talks about America as a 'magical place' of diversity and immigration. He appeals to the King-like dream of getting past the racial divide to a place where the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners can pick the best president without regard to skin colour."

It is tempting for Bermudians, especially white ones, to wish our own politicians could be a little more like this.

Our candidates regularly appeal to racial divisions instead of anything approaching healing. The ferocity of racial accusations in the last election, in particular, left many white Bermudians quite shaken.

But for all the Americanization of Bermuda - for all the U.S. television programmes and music and American college educations Bermudians have received - this island is a different kind of place.

The most important thing to remember, and the easiest to forget, is that Bermuda has a substantial black majority. Strong racial appeals to voters can yield a majority at the polls.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is campaigning to be president of a country where blacks make up less than 13 per cent of the population.

He has the black vote pretty much sewn up by now - though early in the Democratic Party primaries Hillary Clinton was getting more black votes than he was.

But he cannot afford to alienate white voters. And for the most part - not surprisingly, given the ease with which the subject of race can explode in your face - he has done so by avoiding the subject of race as completely as possible.

Barack Obama's skill at moving a race-bound country to think beyond race may indeed be transformational.

And his success is exciting and inspirational for millions upon millions of all colours, living outside the U.S. But whether Bermudians are ready to follow him into a post-racial world remains to be seen.

[[In-content Ad]]

---