There is a double entendre embedded in the phrase "public education" when it comes to how political leaders and the public learn from one another. Rarely has this process been so visible -- and vital -- as it has been this past week, when all three presidential candidates took positions and then questions on the federal gas tax holiday proposed for this summer.

Days after presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain came out with a proposal to lift the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax during the upcoming summer months, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton did likewise, adding that she'd pay for the lost tax revenue with a windfall profits tax on oil producers. In short order, her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, came out in fierce opposition to the proposal.

On the eve of the crucial North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Clinton and Obama found themselves finally having a policy debate on an issue where they are diametrically opposed.

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Yesterday Arizona Sen. John McCain delivered what his handlers were hyping as a major address on health care. McCain's plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation. In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward, not downward.

This is truly amazing: McCain and his handlers knew they had to say something about health care.

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At the risk of developing a reputation for using The Coffee House as a means for commenting on intramural discussions at The New Republic, I do think there's a lot of value in today's exchange between John Judis and Jon Chait on the former's use of George McGovern's campaign as an appropriate metaphor for fears about Barack Obama's electoral strengths and weaknesses, if only because it nicely crystallizes a lot of issues that have been floating around for many months.

I agree with Chait's two main objections to Judis' use of the McGovern analogy: (1) the "McGovern coalition" of younger voters, minorities, and upscale professionals is arguably a whole lot bigger than it was in 1972; and (2) Obama's voter base in primaries isn't necessarily going to be his voter base in a general election campaign. But I'd add a few other objections of my own.

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Last week and again this week, the New York Times editorialized disingenuously about the legislative options under consideration as Congress comes to grips with the nation's housing and foreclosure crisis. Last week's "Foreclosure Politics" opened with some important points about the expensive, irrelevant, and counterproductive tax breaks riddling the Senate's inaptly named "Foreclosure Prevention Act." But from there, the editorial swerves off course and confuses readers about the House bill aimed at preventing foreclosures and minimizing economic pain.

The editorial says that, under the plan by House Financial Services chair Barney Frank (D-MA) to provide $300 billion in refinanced mortgage guarantees...

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I'm doing this post in no small part because I've never been a Lieberman-hater, a New Republic-hater, a Marty Peretz-hater, or a Jamie Kirchick-hater. Indeed, I've defended Lieberman against some of the sillier attacks on his past (if not his recent past), such as the idea that he lost Florida for his own ticket in 2000. And I continue to read and appreciate The New Republic, despite the occasional expression of views with which I don't agree.

But Kirchick's current argument at The Plank, in an exchange with Jonathan Chait and with (most recently) Isaac Chotiner, defending the proposition that Joe Lieberman can be a "loyal Democrat" and also endorse John McCain for president, is just bizarre.

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After spending much of the day doing the sorts of things that normal teacher/scholars do, I returned to the blogosphere to see a raging debate about who said what at the January 1995 meeting convened by the Clintons at Camp David to help them sort through the 1994 election debacle and help him prepare for the 1995 State of the Union Address.

I was there (the only female intellectual-scholar invited), and the tenor of the discussion was one of the instances I was referring to last Saturday in my post on TPM (I also attended a late 1993 intellectuals' dinner at the White House, where similar discussions occurred). The early 1995 meeting at Camp David was a many-hours-long seminar featuring about a dozen intellectuals plus a bunch of White House insiders, talking with Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. It was a fascinating window into how the Clintons were coping with the massive health care debacle and Congressional election defeats of late 1994.

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This morning Senator Ron Wyden and I are testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit at a hearing in support of a "Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights." As has been previously discussed on this site, credit card abuses are widespread, well-entrenched and unlikely to end without a legislative ban. I commended the Subcommittee this morning for tackling credit card reform and taking the steps needed to ban unfair practices that are causing so much pain and financial damage to hard-working families; I also commend those of you who have written and commented about these complex (and abusive) practices.

Here's an update on where our legislative efforts stand: over a dozen bills are now pending in the House and Senate to correct credit card abuses.

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The New York Times's lead editorial today, "Foreclosure Politics," opens with some important points about the expensive, irrelevant, and counterproductive tax breaks riddling the Senate's inaptly named "Foreclosure Prevention Act." But from there, the editorial swerves off course and confuses readers about the House bill aimed at preventing foreclosures and minimizing economic pain.

The editorial says that, under the plan by House Financial Services chair Barney Frank (D-MA) to provide $300 billion in refinanced mortgage guarantees, loans could be modified en masse. But the plan also has flaws. One is political: taxpayers could be on the hook if F.H.A. borrowers defaulted. Congress cannot ask taxpayers to step up without doing all it can to solve the problem without shifting the risk to taxpayers. The way to do that is to allow bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages for troubled homeowners.

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Some respondents this week have questioned the relevance of history for confronting racial inequality today. Jim Sleeper demonstrates, however, just how important our understanding of history is. In the story he has told repeatedly over the years, the New Deal coalition was destroyed and Reaganism was ushered in by those who sought to dismantle institutionalized racism. The blame is thus laid at the feet of antiracist progressives instead of the conservative movement-builders who exploited racial anxieties for Republican victories. The implication Sleeper draws from this story is that the only way forward for progressives is avoid any discussion (let alone action) about race or racism. Pointing out racial stratification will only anger whites and violate the hallowed Tocquevillean norms of American individualism and civic republicanism.

This backlash narrative to which Sleeper subscribes was initially not an historical account, but rather an active political strategy by conservative Republicans to win over white voters both in the south and in the north and west as well. Party organizers couched their appeals to white working and middle class voters in racialized language, fanning fears and exciting resentments by hinting at the horrors to come if their neighborhoods, unions, schools and the like were opened up to black folks.

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There is a broad and not yet fully articulated difference in assumption between Sleeper on the one hand, and Lowndes, Loury, and myself on the other hand. Surely, we disagree about the centrality of racism in American history up through our present moment, but there are also different assumptions about change. Sleeper worries that confronting the past creates resentment; people must "put the past behind them" if they are to forge a progressive coalition. In a variety of ways, Loury, Lowndes, and I have argued, in contrast, that no future -on different terms than the past seems to dictate- is possible unless we loosen the grip of the past, by naming and confronting it. Fundamental -as opposed to incremental- change requires confrontation and conflict about the meaning of the past.

My worry about Obama concerns not only race, then, but his view of history, and his assumption that we can "move beyond" rancor and partisanship if we "leave behind" the sixties era to which he attributes them. In my view, he is leaving behind, indeed patholoogizing, a moment when the imperial project of the American state, and its racial underpinnings, were exposed and contested by broad constituencies in American life. Of course, since 1968 the new right and the Republican party have organized to demonize that moment, which connected social injustice to imperial war. This effort to overcome "the Vietnam syndrome" as well as social justice concerns has been extraordinarily effective.

In what terms, then, are we to address the imperial character and domestic policies of the American state now?

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I am pleased that so many readers found my previous post to be stimulating, and that it has attracted so much discussion at the site. By way of a response to some of these comments, and with apologies for the length of this post, I wish to try to clarify and defend a few of the key propositions in my original piece:

1. Comparing Obama and LBJ:

A shocking degree of historical amnesia/ignorance has been revealed in the gushing press commentary on Obama's 'race' speech. People are confusing a cult of personality with a political movement capable of making institutional reforms. I compared, unfavorably, Obama's recent speech with LBJ's commencement address at Howard University in 1965 because, unlike Obama, LBJ staked-out a political position which has had consequences. This position was that the people of the United States were obligated to undertake a massive expansion of social investment for the disadvantaged in American society, and that this obligation rested at least in part on the historical necessity that we act so as to reduce racial inequality in our country. This kind of rhetoric, coupled with a focused legislative agenda and the political acumen/muscle to get in enacted, is the stuff of historical transformation. It represents the kind of thing that can be accomplished when the apparatus of a political party is harnessed with an ideological vision that has teeth, and that is willing to take a stand on the great questions about the role of government and about the moral imperatives of our imperfect history.

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As I follow the discussion we're having here at TPMCafe, I keep thinking about The Mother Teresa Effect, a concept based on her quote: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

Jae Ran Kim explains:

In 2004, Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment to see if this quote held true in real life. They gave participants five $1 bills to participate in a fictional survey, then presented half of the participants with a fact sheet about starving children in Africa along with an envelope for a donation. The other half of the participants received the same envelope, but instead of a fact sheet, they were given a photo of a young girl named Rokia and a paragraph about how her life would benefit from the participant's donation.

As you might expect, those with the picture of Rokia gave more than twice as much as those with just the fact sheet.

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I think it is worth reflecting more on the significance of Obama’s Philadelphia speech. Unlike Skrentny, I think his dramatic departure from conventional political rhetoric about race matters quite a bit. In any case I don’t know what Obama would do – or would be able to do – as president for African Americans. In general, presidents don’t control the terrain on which they act. Absent pressure from below, Obama’s range of options on the matter of racial equality would likely be constrained.

Nevertheless, the fact that the speech has been so enthusiastically received across a broad spectrum (including a number of prominent conservatives) may indicate that there may be something new afoot. There has been no real groundswell of antiracist action of late, that’s for sure. But maybe there is finally some exhaustion in the long-held strategy of racial demonization that brought the GOP to power (and the DLC along with it) in recent decades. Many leading Republicans, including Bush, former RNC head Ken Mehlman, Michael Gershon, and others now try hard to distance themselves from the taint of racism. This fact, while significant, should not immediately provide solace, however. As Victoria Hattam and I have written elsewhere, Republicans who want to reconfigure their relationship with civil rights will do so for purposes most on the left would not support. The most prominent example here is probably Condoleezza Rice using her childhood in Jim Crow “Bombingham” to justify the war in Iraq.

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While we debate the impact that Obama's race has on his campaign, we should also ask ourselves: would his election make a difference for African Americans?

Consider this: the Department of Justice reports that African American incarceration rates are eight times higher than whites, and they are about three times than that for Latinos (see chart; note: pdf). This racial difference is hardly unique. The African American unemployment rate is now twice that for whites (with Latino unemployment in between black and white). But this is very old news--that's the same difference it was in 1964 when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. And in their classic book, American Apartheid, Doug Massey and Nancy Denton reported the astonishing statistic that the wealthiest blacks had higher residential segregation rates than even the poorest Latinos.

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I would like to address the interesting differences between the posts submitted by Loury, Lowndes, and Sleeper.

If we can endure Sleeper’s dismissive denigration of any view he disagrees with, his way of positioning himself between those he calls “extremes,” and his demonizing of anti-racist politics, we do arrive at an important claim in the final sentence of his post: “For Obama, de-politicizing race is not only a necessity but a big tactical step forward toward racial justice.” As Sleeper has argued for years, liberalism became a racializing (identity) politics that produced division and resentment rather than consensus around issues of class inequality. Social justice thus requires taking race (and identity politics more broadly) out of progressive politics, which can advance only by speaking a language of universality, not difference. Lowndes and Loury offer compelling reasons to reject Sleeper’s narrative of post-new deal and post-sixties history, and so, his assertions about the conditions enabling progressive politics.

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In American politics, there's a basic - and sad - rule of thumb: When a white person talks about a taboo subject, they are often considered courageous or a "truth-teller." When a black person talks about the same subject, they are attacked as "controversial" or worse. Draft-avoider Pat Buchanan, for instance, beats his chest as super-patriot and supposedly principled spokesperson for that horribly oppressed group: whitey, as he calls it. For this, Buchanan is rewarded with a regular slot as a Serious Political Analyst on cable news. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor and former Marine, is berated as anti-American for acknowleding the concept of blowback that our own government acknowledges.

This double-standard dynamic is why Barack Obama's speech on race was so courageous: He addressed a taboo subject - America's racial divide - knowing that black political leaders like him have typically faced harsh Establishment vitriol for doing so.

This divide is American politics' own version of Voldemort from the Harry Potter books - the thing whose name must not be spoken - and especially not by a black man, according to our political culture. That's especially true in the 2008 presidential campaign as the Clinton campaign continues to do everything it can to transform the election into a proxy war over race.

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Glad to see Jim Sleeper joining the conversation on Obama and the future of this great conversation on race. I have to say though, that it put me in the mind of another conflict in the 1990s—the rupture of the black-Jewish coalition. The intellectualizing around the fracturing of this venerable coalition always struck me as weird, mostly because it seemed some distant from my, admittedly bias, on the ground reality. I don't mean to trivialize Crown Heights or Farrakhan, but I think the hot debates went right over the heads of lot of blacks and Jews. It took me coming to New York to understand that "The Split" was a quasi-local story—a narrative born of a few patchwork incidents and then foisted on millions of people, who basically had no idea.

In those days I was a lazy student, half-assing my way through Baltimore city public schools and then, miraculously, into college. Still, even then, I had some interest in these matters, and was always taken aback by how much energy was expended on some of the issues Jim addresses—affirmative action, racially demarcated voter districts, the merits of "diversity." Had you asked me, or I'd say any black kid in West Baltimore, about race we would have talked about crack, prisons, the murder rate, poverty and teen pregnancy. I didn't even know what "identity politics" meant until circa 2002. Of course now I can sling the term around like a pro.

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One of things I really admired about Obama's speech was his attempt to demonstrate that racism is an issue all of us need to care about - including white folks. The jury is still out as to how successful he was, but it got me thinking about two questions: What role should white people play in ending racism? And how do we mobilize them to join the cause?

The blogosphere is full of lists that tell people what not to do when discussing race. See Sixteen Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing with Racism and How to Suppress Discussions of Racism, for example.

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For more than three decades, the staggering evidence of racial stratification in America has been met with stubborn indifference, denial or irritation. Black leaders who have raised issues of inequality in the post-civil rights era have been consistently dismissed as hucksters or paranoics, regardless of the content of their claims. Obama initially was able to avoid these kind of caricatures by downplaying divisions of any kind, and claiming to have left the conflicts of the 1960s behind. But a racially-obsessed nation combined with the statements of Obama’s afrocentric pastor have pushed him to confront a split in his own political life between the reconciling identity he represents to the country and the black nationalist political culture on Chicago’s Southside. Instead of casting off either side, he attempts to resolve the split by metaphorically merging the body politic with his own. In doing so he does not subsume black claims for justice, but rather makes them integral to a renewed national purpose.

By mapping his genetic heritage onto the national heritage in the Philadelphia speech, he can use this racial pluralism writ small to re-interpret and thus alter the negative view of the Reverend Wright.

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I agree with much of what Glenn and Ta-Nehisi have said about Obama's speech, including the notion that it is too early to say if it will lead to progress, and that it seemed to be mostly about, or to have the most importance to, black/white relations. But I found myself perhaps more impressed than they with Obama’s speech--impressed by its political boldness and its political brilliance.

These are my main points: Obama’s speech was remarkable and powerful for what he said, how he said it, and because of who he is. At the same time, it showed that even a politician as gifted as Obama cannot transcend rule number one of American politics: there shall be no policies targeted to benefit blacks.

Key to the power of the speech, of course, is who Obama is.

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I think, without a doubt, Obama's speech definitely advanced the dialogue. I thought it was the most complex, layered speech on race I've ever heard from a politician. Furthermore, it was one of the brainiest meditations on any subject I've ever heard from a presidential candidate so close to the White House. But I think Glenn makes a great point. The talking heads are running around claiming this is the greatest speech on race since "I Have a Dream." But we should be wary because history and race are two of the MSM's biggest blind-spots. The hamfisted, slack manner in which they've handled Obama's racial identity (last year he wasn't black enough, now he's too black) is evidence that these are the last people to we should turn to for answers on something as nuanced as this. In fact, I think that's the sort of question that can not, and should not, be answered today. Let's see what happens. Then we can judge the historical import of "The Speech."

That aside, as we look forward we have a huge problem when it comes to closing the racial gap. But first some qualification: To talk about this broadly in terms of race, I think misses the point.

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To my mind, commentary about Obama’s ‘race’ speech in the press has been superficial and overtly, unreflectively partisan. (It was a fine speech, to be sure; don't get me wrong. This guy is not only a brilliant politician, he's a genuine intellectual. He has integrity. And, he's brave, to boot.) Yet, as editorial writers rush to call it "the greatest speech on race since King's 1963 oration...," I can't help but notice how they blithely overlook LBJ's 1965 commencement speech at Howard University which, to my mind and by any serious historical standard, was easily a more important and historic statement. Johnson’s speech was, after all, a statement which had and still has consequences, in terms of major institutional reforms embodied in our nation's laws and practices, affecting the lives of many millions of people over the span of two generations. (But, then, the Obama enthusiasts have successfully implanted the idea that it is somehow ‘racially insensitive to recall that LBJ's skills, vision, courage and compassion were absolutely indispensable in bringing about the progress we all take for granted today...)

It seems to me that this is a defining moment in the discourse on race and justice in America. Clinton once tried to promote a 'national conversation on race,' which was well-intended though ineffective. Well, we may be on the threshold of having a very different national conversation on race, thanks to Obama's brilliant yet troubling speech. That line about how the movement he's leading -- across lines of race, class gender, age and social location, on behalf of the idea that people can work together -- must not be made hostage to the past, this goes right to the heart of the matter, in my view. How shall we deal with our unlovely racial past? What claims, if any, does it make on us today? Of course, we ought not to be prisoners of our past. But, as a person deeply concerned for the welfare of black people in this country, I am far from being convinced that Obama's vision, as set out in his Philadelphia speech, marks out a coherent plan for moving forward on these issues.

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This week, in light of Barack Obama's much-lauded and discussed speech on race in American, we asked a handful of academics, journalists and activists (and those somewhere in between) to offer us their thoughts on race in America. Specifically, we asked three questions:

1. Setting aside the politics of the moment (if that's possible), do you think Obama's speech advanced the national conversation of race in America?

2. Moving forward, what questions do you think we should be asking about race in America?

3. What roadblocks do you think have preventing us from having a productive conversation about race previously? How can they be avoided going forward?

We'll be posting their responses all week in the Special Guest blog. Feel free to offer your thoughts in the reader blogs and Chuck and I will link over to them.