Some thoughts about race in the primaries and what it takes to be president.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

:-Barack Obama would almost certainly not be winning, or even have been in a position to run, if he were not black.

:-None of the other candidates in this, or other previous, races, would have been in a position to run if they were not white.

It takes a very, very unusual combination of circumstances to get someone into a position to run for president - it's not simply a matter of having some special spark. If you change something as fundamental about a candidate as their race, you're taking away the specific set of circumstances that got them selected; the odds that another, different, such set of circumstances would crop up are negligable. So, to some extent, I agree with Geraldine Ferraro, but her remarks were misleading, even if not technically untrue, I think.

:-Hillary Clinton quite possibly *would* be a leading candidate even if she were a man, but only if Bill Clinton had been a woman.

In Clinton's case, a very large part of the special circumstances that make her a viable candidate is having been married to a president. If her and her husband's genders had been reversed, she might well still be in the race; if she hadn't married a man who went on to become president she almost certainly wouldn't be.

:-George W. Bush most certainly wouldn't be president if his father hadn't been.