Does Gloria Steinem really believe that Condoleezza Rice would have a harder time running for the GOP nomination than Barack Obama is having running for the Democratic nomination? Assuming that the gender morphing has to occur on the side of the Democrats strikes me as unimaginative. While we're playing what-if, does Steinem really believe that if Condoleezza Rice were the GOP presidential nominee, that she would be worse off against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama?

Clinton's MLK/LBJ analogy was intended as brinkmanship. It's possible to deny that it was anything other than a factual reference--a president had to sign the Civil Rights Act into law. In that case, why not make the factual statement that a president had to sign the Civil Rights Act into law? What was Clinton's point?

It is brinkmanship to suggest that a president, who happened to be white, is necessary to realize the dreams of a civil rights activist, who happened to be black. But could it have been any other way in 1964? There is simply no way to make a statement like this without raising the question of interpretation: does this mean that in 2006, Clinton has to be the president who realizes Obama's dream?

Denying the potential for the range of interpretations of Clinton's statement is wrongheaded and empirically wrong, to say the least. The statement resists the imposition of a "merely factual" interpretation; the onus of proof that the factual interpretation is the unitary canonical interpretation rests with those who maintain it.

If race had nthing to do with Clinton's assertion, and the entire semantic content of Clinton's statement reduces to "a president is needed to sign legislation into law" such that the slightest connotation of race is necessarily a stretch that must be assigned to the imaginations of persons whose reading comprehension must be called into question, then what do we make of the are numerous examples that could have been offered of presidents signing legislation into law that have nothing to do with race? Why weren't any of these offered?

For example, the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 could have been offered as an example. It took a president, Lyndon Johnson, to sign the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act into law in 1966, thereby realizing Ralph Nader's dream of automobile safety.

I submit that reading race into such a statement would indeed be a stretch. Insisting that race cannot be read into the statement that Clinton made, when there were other examples available that Clinton could have used, is fairly called a stretch.

Here is what Senator Clinton said:

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964...It took a president to get it done.”

And here is what Senator Clinton might have said:

“Ralph Nader's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act of 1966...It took a president to get it done.”

If the intended reading was only that a president is needed to sign legislation into law, then this should have been be stated flatly, without reference to LBJ and MLK. The LBJ/Ralph Nader example could have been used instead of the LBJ/MLK example, if the statement, deliberately uttered, was a simple statement of fact not intended to suggest the ideas surrounding civil rights; race relations between blacks and whites; the fact that a white president signed legislation which began to realize the dream of a black civil rights leader; that Washington bureaucrats and nont popular movements are agents for change (cnider the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and the antiar movement); and so on. These considerations raise the question why Clinton thought it was necessary or desirable to invoke LBJ and MLK when other examples were available.

Yes. Since there are so many examples available of a president signing legislation into law that others have advocated--Clinton could have used examples from her own experience, such as the vote on the Iraq war--that it is reasonable to assume that this particular example was chosen for its volatile ambiguity. I do not believe that the assertion that "injecting race" into Clinton's remarks is a stretch, especially for someone who claims to have 35 years of experience. To assert that all Clinton meant was that presidents sign legislation, given the range of statements that could have been used, and that race had nothing to do with it, is preposterous.

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P.S. Apologies for typos--I'm not used to my keyboard!

The debate is worth having because it illustrates how campaigns are skillfully managed to avoid substantive issues. Clinton's statement was skillful: it had the predictable result, Clinton insisted that her words were construed by the other side and by the media, and nothing substantive was discussed ad interim.

Provided that one recognizes this aspect of campaigns, the debate is worth having. If the debate has to be limited to whether it is good for the Democratic party (or some other party), then the debate is not worth having. One learns to censor oneself--the value of avoiding substantive discusion becomes internalized; also, 2/3rds of human conversation is gossip, so this can be exploited.

I have no interest in supporting media or campaigns that set the agenda, filter information, control the distribution of concerns and limit the spectrum of admissible debate.

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