So how about those byelections? Truly portentous events portend. The eyes of the world are on Montmagny, Que.

Oh, you thought I meant New Jersey, where the Republicans just captured a bright blue state house. Or Virginia, where they took back the Old Dominion from the glorious Democrats by 18 percentage points. Or New York's 23rd district, where a liberal Republican was ousted for excess liberalism before they even voted, allowing the Democrat to squeak by a Conservative insurgent. Or the Maine referendum, where gay marriage lost for only the 31st time in 31 U.S. state votes.

Pshaw. I'm talking about Canada's byelections. Elections Canada insists such things are under way in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, Hochelaga, Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup and New Westminster-Coquitlam. Maybe the problem is the names. In a classic Pace Picante sauce ad, a southern cop denounces the dreaded other brand made in "NEW JERSEY?!?" whereas it's hard to spit out "Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup" with indignant regional pride.

The insulting alternative would be to conclude that politics in the United States is more interesting, more important or both. But that cannot be. After all, we know Canada is on the cutting edge of progressive soft power environmental social justice and the world longs for more of us, while the U.S. is obnoxious, overbearing and primitive.

Tuesday's Citizen reported a Historica-Dominion Institute poll saying nearly 90 per cent of us like Barack Obama and 70 per cent like individual Americans, but less than half feel at home in the U.S. (only one third of Quebecers do, but since they don't feel at home in Canada either, maybe they're just malcontents). Things haven't changed since 2005, though back then only 21 per cent of us liked the no-good low-down incumbent Republican worst-ever president. And more than two thirds think Canadian and American values are as different as in 2005 or more so.

It's hard to test the last point since they don't let us vote on stuff like gay marriage up here. Heck, they don't even let our parliamentarians vote on it. Our values, if any, are an undiscovered country. But who cares? "American-style" remains the ultimate political insult.

So it strikes me as a bit weird that the Ontario Liberal Party just held a convention in Windsor so boring no one noticed it (apparently including their own webmaster) where the keynote speaker was former John Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen. Talk about fresh new ideas ... from before Michael Ignatieff even went to Harvard.

Even stranger, an NDP press release in May hyperventilated that their federal convention in Halifax in August would feature a keynote address from "Anita Dunn, director of communications to the Obama for America Presidential campaign" and a speech by Marshall Ganz, a "Harvard University lecturer" who "advised Obama on organizing, training and leadership development.". And it quoted the NDP's national director that, "The focus of the convention will be on winning strategies for the next campaign. With Obama's inner circle, we'll be learning from the best." You can readily imagine what the NDP would say if the Tories boasted of learning tactics from a top American operative. Then there was a Sept. 2 e-mail showing Jack Layton and the slogan "CHANGE you can BELIEVE IN," which I vaguely associate with some Illinois senator's presidential campaign. Not that we're jealous.

Oh, and when Ralph Nader urged Canadians to support the NDP in 2004 or the "Quebec party," whose name he hadn't bothered to learn (dang ignorant Americans who come to Canada in July with skis on their roof racks), Jack Layton said "We appreciate his endorsement ... I think it will underline that someone of great credibility is supporting us." No doubt he'd control his sneer reflex if Sarah Palin endorsed Stephen Harper.

The point is, Canadian politics is really interesting and conducted on a far more elevated plane. Except when the Liberals demand an emergency debate on H1N1 to find out why the Tories favour influenza (oh yeah, because they're uncaring bums) and why they bought vaccine from one company (oh yeah, because the Liberal government signed the contract; talk about a debating emergency).

That's why we're glued to the Hochelaga byelection, to see whether the Bloc can get it back from the Liberals, or the Liberals from the NDP, or the Tories, or whoever used to hold wherever it is. And whenever they're voting.

We just took a glimpse at New Jersey to see if Americans were enlightened enough to adopt our crushingly expensive health-care system complete with long waiting lines. They're not. They're loud vulgar bums. Now back to the Musquodoboit Valley.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

A new poll shows the Conservatives within reach of a majority after their scandalous decision to put party logos on government cheques, and the Liberals within reach of the ocean floor after their scandalous decision to offer us rule by a philosopher klunk. I don't know whether to laugh at the Grits or cry at the Tories.

I'm inclined to chuckle because I spent the Chrétien years clinging to Robert Louis Stevenson's claim that "wicked men and fools ... both get paid in the end; but the fools first." And the Liberals are now reaping a bitter harvest of the same mean-spirited arrogance they assiduously sowed during their long period in office.

My dislike of what recent federal Liberal governments did was, I struggled to convince myself, just part of democratic life. But I was profoundly bothered by the way they did it; their brutal arrogance seemed to me to cheapen our political discourse to no constructive or even discernable purpose. Had they carried out the very same policies in a more generous tone what would have been lost, by them or Canada?

I can tell you what was lost by their failure to do so. Their brass-knuckled approach to the Reform/Alliance Party left their adversaries calloused and burning with a visceral desire for revenge if the opportunity presented itself.

It now has, and I dismiss the Liberals' pious laments with a tight-lipped reference to Romans 6:12. The tragedy is that the majority of voters who did not support Chrétien a second or third time, or Martin once, are being served the same cold thistle stew. And polls suggest we like it.

I reach this depressing conclusion because of a depressing reflection on what idiots insist on calling "Chequegate." (Look, the Watergate Complex is past its sell date and so is this cliché; I know people have headlines to write, but "scandal" is not a very long word so please show this suffix the gate.)

It is not much of a scandal by international standards. Another example of cheap politicization seems more crass than sinister. But here's what worries me.

What if the Tories are popular not despite this conduct but because of it? What if the moral and intellectual tone of our politics has now sunk to the point that a reliable reputation for rewarding supporters and punishing adversaries has become a key political asset?

The question is by no means fanciful. In much of the world it is the alpha and omega of politics that it is lucrative to back the winner and unsafe to do anything else. We could go there too, and if we did, it is not evident how we could get back.

As so often, I must insist that I am not naive. The politics of patronage has always existed in Canada, particularly in certain regions no one with political aspirations would name out loud but every single reader identified instantly. And I know Sir John A. Macdonald's main defence was that his overt roguishness made him even more lovable. But there is an important difference.

Canadians inherited, and long cherished, a conviction that electoral bribery, directly at the polls or indirectly through programs, was shameful even when unavoidable. Citizens and politicians alike generally regarded it with distaste. So if the governors got too brazen, as in Macdonald's railway scandal (mercifully not known as CPRgate), voters punished them. And if the governed got too greedy, politicians at least attempted to recall them to their principles.

Regrettably this sort of thing is all too susceptible to slow erosion. Political integrity is hard to accumulate and easy to dissipate and once it's gone voters and politicians routinely pull one another back into the mire rather than out of it. And I think the federal Liberals bear much blame here. Remember the seedy push by Paul Martin's acolytes to oust Jean Chrétien for no reason anyone can now recall, and Chrétien's open admission that he stayed longer just to spite them. Can anyone tell me who benefited from any of that savage cunning? Not them and not us.

I'd enjoy the Grits' slow roasting over open polls a lot more if the Tories weren't doing it between bouts of reckless spending and nastily vacuous partisanship deeply harmful to Canada. At this point, I regret profoundly that they can't all lose. (The time is ideal for someone in a convent to seek office: Put "Nun of the Above" on the ballot and two minor misunderstandings could spell a landslide. But sister, be sure to take a vow of poverty beforehand because with today's deficits you're sure to need it before you're done.)

One question remains. Are we shifting Tory-wards because the Ignatieff Liberals are at once unbearably conceited and manifestly incompetent, or because we've become a greedy rabble? If it's the former, I'll manage to laugh. If the latter, pass the handkerchief. In fact, pass the whole box.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Where is the oratory of yesteryear? Not in Parliament, on the streets, or even in the newspapers. We have become a society of irritable mumblers in which a genuine rhetorical flourish would be as welcome as a genuine social conservative.

So lend me your eyes while I perorate on behalf of Richard M. Weaver. He would be more worthy of attention than our whole tribe of politicians just for "Let it be offered as a parting counsel that parties bethink themselves of how their chieftains speak." But he wrote much more, in 1953, surprisingly relevant to getting us out of the political fog we are in.

In The Ethics of Rhetoric, a title unlikely to be welcome on Parliament Hill, he warned of "a real if obscure relationship between the vitality of what one is saying and the palatability of one's rhetoric." It is no accident, as they themselves liked to say, that Brezhnev-era spokesmen used such stiffly contorted prose, or that North Korean official statements defy parody. Nor is it an accident that our own politicians are windy without grandeur, humourless without solemnity, abstract without perspective, stuck in Weaver's despised "petty and contentious style."

Why has political discourse shrunk so far that we find the grand mid-19th century style embarrassing? Without denying its defects, Weaver suggests as one major problem the dwindling amount of agreement on which political orators might build. Particularly, without reliable audience belief in "the unity of past and present, the unity of moral sets and of causal sets," one cannot come to grips with the big picture.

As The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson just complained, "it is almost impossible in Canada to have any debate on anything of great substance ... We have no urgency these days to debate anything other than the here and now ..."

I claim it's because we don't agree that the past has lessons or that morality matters, but we do all still want money so politicians squabble over who will give us more. Hedonism is the last refuge of the morally vacant.

How did we get into this mess?

Here I was struck by Weaver's chapter on the language of social science, which he accuses of resembling "a parade of terms which seem to go by on stilts, as if it were important to keep from touching the ground." He cites two main defects. First, "In all writing which has come to be regarded as wisdom about the human being, there is an undertone of the sardonic. Man at his best is a sort of caricature of himself." But social scientists don't admit it.

Second, there's no metaphor. Vivid imagery is neither empty decoration nor a concession to our incapacity for sustained analysis. Rather, its underlining of relevant similarities is fundamental to real thought. Without it you get language "comparatively lacking in responsibility .... that one expects from those who have become insulated or daintified."

Political correctness has this quality: "Persons of size" misses everything important about unrestrained gobbling. But so does the peevish droning of Canadian politicians about the deficit, cost control in health care or even a juicy scandal. Wordy without eloquence, they invariably sound like a report by a Martian anthropologist on Political mores in early 21st century Canada.

To scoop one boring example from the tedious flux, declaring the production of maple syrup "an event of national historic significance," cabinet minister Jim Prentice droned: "The origins of this industry helped define our national identity and remain very much a part of how we recognize ourselves as a people."

Why? Was General Wolfe a maple tree? Or a tacky souvenir in the shape of a leaf?

It is no accident that our politicians talk this way. Our governments have, for 40 humourless years, been giant social science experiments, meddling with our habits, shaping our personalities and reengineering our society. And our petty and contentious chieftains are filled with panicky determination that their prose shall at no point touch the ground so when they say something silly, offensive or merely painful to certain voting groups, it isn't really about anything and cannot be made to haunt them in any specific future situation.

Weaver's diagnosis comes with a warning. If a society's debates "occur at a very elementary level, we suspect that the culture has not defined itself, or that it is decayed and threatened with dissolution."

Arguably Canada has both problems, if only we could argue in language that meant anything. For instance, "If certain government policies were announced in the language of the barbershop, their absurdity might become overwhelmingly apparent."

To be sure, my preference for authentic speech and lessons from the past is outdated. But I call that one of its virtues. Like in Rome. See, it was this big old city and ...

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Good morning everybody. A word from your head of state here. Now that I'm in charge there's gonna be some changes so smarten up. And fetch my regal trappings.

What's that from the cheap seats? Some mouldy old monarchist says I'm not head of state? Dust yourself off, dude. You probably think we're ruled by Good Queen Bess or something.

Zounds, rogue, woulds't wave a Constitution at me? Consign that hoary parchment to the flames and go bowl with Francis Drake. This is Postmodernia where self-esteem reigns supreme. And mine requires that I be head of state. Me me me.

Presumptuous? Moi? My consort and I brush aside such chatter. As does one Ms. Jean who appointed herself head of state recently and has forced her minions to defend the claim without shame. So why can't I?

Some quibblers may object that I'm a lot further from the seat of power than Ms. Jean since Stephen Harper hasn't appointed me to anything. And, regrettably, I am still waiting for him to run out of other right-wingers, this being Canada, and give me a Senate seat. (By the way, I hope I wasn't out of line with that "belly" crack in August.) Or, à la Peter Sellers in The Party, have somebody in the PMO read my name off the wrong list while distracted by their BlackBerry.

Meanwhile my lack of appointed office makes my act of usurpation far less perilous than that just attempted from behind the curtains at Rideau Hall. For out of the billowing monarchist dust rides the pertinent objection that if Michaëlle Jean is our head of state, we have a prime minister appointed by a person he appointed. In which case it really is high time we replaced the maple leaf on our flag with a banana.

Would the prorogation crisis last fall have been less troublesome if this tight closed circle really described supreme power in Canada? What if Mr. Harper made John Baird head of state? Would you feel less archaic?

Some Citizen letter-writers offered support to Ms. Jean on the grounds that the monarchy is ridiculous. Not compared to their argument. For pace King James I think we can safely say No Queen, no Governor General. When I'm in office, people who can't grasp that point are headed for the Tower. And I don't mean the Peace Tower.

Drawn into this typically silly Canadian spat, a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace offered drily: "In terms of her official title, I presume the Queen is head of state in Canada." And for those who claim official titles are for Elizabethan chumps in huge frill collars and Ms. Jean holds the job "de facto" which is good enough for government work, well, so will I as soon as you louts get in line behind my pretentions. With the Dominion Institute saying 92 per cent of Canadians can't identify our head of state, I like my chances of confusing my way into the post.

Adrienne Clarkson tried, calling herself "Canadian Head of State" in a 2004 speech and "the head of state in Canada" in her memoirs. But if logic is not another relic of the Shakespearean Age of incoherent darkness, this assertion raises the question of succession. Even generally excellent or at least stable political systems run into terrible problems if they lack an orderly system for transferring supreme power. So how did Ms. Clarkson pass the job to Ms. Jean?

I understand how Elizabeth II got whatever her job is from George VI. But this Clarkson-Jean line baffles me, unless it's a CBC thing. And who's now the heir apparent? Strombo? Wikipedia says Ms. Jean was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II but that's obviously codswallop unless you buy into that Queen-as-head-of-state rubbish.

It horrifies people in this hyper-democratic age of scrambling to loot the treasury that the Queen is not elected. But I call it an advantage of constitutional monarchy that the referee is not also a player. Besides, if lack of electability is an asset, I'm probably the best qualified person in the country.

If it's not, the obvious retort to Lady Jean Grey is that if she fancies a go at supreme power she is welcome to seek, first, the abolition of constitutional monarchy in Canada and, second, election as our first president. But you can see why she'd prefer a shortcut.

Me too. I'm definitely entering the palace by the back door. King John. Who could object to the sound of that? Oh, and what am I bid for the post of Sheriff of Nottingham, with its attractive freelance revenue-raising possibilities?

So welcome to Robsonia. I'm pleased preparations are under way to house me at public expense in a comfortable residence (especially compared with that junk-heap at 24 Sussex) with a solicitous staff to keep away the importunate masses and convey the royal medications at suitable hours. And look, the walls are festooned with soft, padded material for my regal comfort.

Yup, there's perks to being Emperor of the Universe.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Time for a little fence-mending, I'd say. No, not Michael Ignatieff and Denis Coderre, Stephen Harper and the right or Jack Layton and relevance. My actual fence.

It won't make headlines even in this month's "Not Obviously Worse Homes and Gardens." But it sure beats my backyard's previous centrefold in "Trees God Didn't Make" and cover story in "Chain Link Fences to Disgrace a Soviet Waste Dump." And I would like to draw to the attention of my political masters that I did it all by myself. (OK, all by my wife, but they didn't help her either.)

Why bore you with this wooden prose? Because if you read the newspapers, you will realize such self-reliant projects are unknown to our chattering classes. In official Canada we cannot lift a fork without state assistance.

Thus the Globe and Mail has been beating the drums for a national sodium strategy. A typical headline last month: "Ottawa must act on salt crisis, doctors say." Why must Ottawa act? "Ottawa" is not eating salt. We are. But apparently we can't stop ourselves because it's in our food.

This Tuesday, under the preposterous headline " 'Invisible' sodium think tank under fire," the Globe described Commons health committee efforts to find out why the sodium-reduction task force established in 2007 hadn't reduced our sodium intake.

Because we make our own dinner? Nooooo. Because of too little federal spending.

"A massive sodium-reduction campaign rolled out several years ago in Britain cost the government more than $30 million, said Mary L'Abbé, vice-chairwoman of the sodium working group."

Are British people healthier or less saline? The question doesn't seem to arise. It's just assumed to be government or nothing, for everything.

A Sept. 24th press release tells me the federal government gave $14,000 to Grain magazine, published by the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild, so "the best new writing from Saskatchewan writers will continue to be available to Canadians."

The initial impulse of the welfare state to protect us from major disasters has turned into relentless meddling in every aspect of our lives -- meddling from people whose competence in their own affairs, let alone ours, is far from obvious. Remember when the fisheries department gave lobster fishermen a toll-free number connected to a smut service, then corrected the error on their website, but didn't send out a new press release? Don't try this with power tools, folks.

Suppose you were building a fence and our four main party leaders wandered bickering down the street. Harper, Ignatieff, Layton and Duceppe walk into a fence ... Politicians occasionally display surprisingly normal aptitudes, like singing: "I get high with a little help from my friends." But I remember the time Jack Layton and his wife went canoeing and it reminded him of social injustice. Give these guys wood and screws and they'll slap together a soapbox at your expense and jump on it to praise themselves.

In fact the government did help with my fence, through the Tories' Home Renovation Credit (which they haven't actually managed to enact, so maybe fix the Constitution before my windows). But why? What possible logic, other than electoral, exists for this credit? If the new fence is worth more to me than the cost of building it, I don't need a subsidy, and if not, they're paying me your money to do something wasteful. But what do I know?

If, as the anti-sodium activists imply, I cannot eat soup safely without state assistance, by what tortured logic am I entrusted with choosing a government to help me eat it? And if we need a national salt strategy, why not a National Fence Strategy?

The obvious answer is if we had a Canada Fence Act there'd be waiting lists for wood and we'd be trying to lure carpenters here from the Third World. Maybe we already are, given governments' efforts to make everyone go to university and study sociology or, if they're girls, engineering.

Although Willard Boyle, the Canadian who just shared the Nobel Prize in physics, denounced ill-advised subsidies and said he wants "an appreciation for the free will, free spirit of scientists."

Of scientists he said: "Give them a chance to do the things they want to do." Us too, I say.

Plus, Mr. Boyle was home-schooled until 14, then sent to a private school. So why does Dalton McGuinty want to be the education premier? I suppose I should be happy it'll keep him away from hammers.

Fences are real. They stay up or don't; the boards are crooked or straight; you stain them or fail to. There's nothing to spin, no manoeuvering, no interdepartmental committees.

Besides, if we had a national fence strategy I know what it would look like -- the hideous rusty chain-link junk I just cut out to put in my nice fence. If you want some, there's plenty. Just call the toll-free number for Fence Canada and hope it's not a sex line.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

According to the newspapers, the international community is putting pressure on Iran over nuclear weapons. This is very bad news.

Consider the Monday New York Times story that the U.S. wants new sanctions that "could include a cutoff of investments to the Iranian oil-and-gas industry and restrictions on many more banks than those currently blacklisted."

I'm sure that has Tehran shaking. But with laughter, not fear. The same day the Globe and Mail editorialized in favour of "sanctions with real teeth" because an "end to Iran's nuclear-weapons ambitions must ... be a priority for the world."

But life is not a Coke ad (or a Globe editorial) and we are not the world.

Remember Qaddafi and Ahmadinejad at the UN? That's "the world". So is Robert Mugabe. And 56 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, many strongly favouring Tehran's atomic-death-to-Jews policy. That's the world, not the fictitious entity in the Globe's Tuesday headline "Will the world get tough on Iran?"

Too many journalists share the delusion of politicians like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. President Barack Obama that Western leaders are moral superpowers some of whom just happen to have nuclear weapons. (Canadian politicians even think relinquishing nuclear arms increased our global influence.)

And they are further dangerously convinced their virtue is irresistible, provided nothing remotely savouring of consequences taints their nobility.

Thus the American president, on the weekend, spoke of sanctions as an alternative to diplomacy rather than a component of it. As for Frederick the Great's "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments," it's a tune they cannot carry.

Last Thursday, the hapless Gordon Brown uttered two revealing fatuities. First, "The level of deception by the Iranian government and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments will shock and anger the entire international community." Second, there is "no choice but to draw a line in the sand."

By "the entire international community" he means not actual governments but high-minded post-modern liberals like himself who think words are deeds and therefore use them in highly inappropriate ways. For instance calling vacuity "pressure." And using "line in the sand" in the opposite sense to the original.

According to Livy's History of Rome, when Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV invaded Egypt with a massive army, a solitary Roman official named Gaius Popillius Laenas confronted him with an ultimatum from the Roman Senate: withdraw or fight.

Antiochus (whose realm included modern Iran) offered to discuss it with his advisors but Popillius drew a line around him in the sand and said "Before you cross this circle I want you to give me a reply for the Senate." Antiochus sweated a bit then promised to withdraw, and did, because Rome had the capacity and demonstrated will to act.

This time the legions will not come, and Ahmadinejad knows it. Besides, he doesn't care. He thinks if he and we die in a nuclear exchange, he will go to heaven and laugh at us eating Zaqqum berries in hell. (Koran, Sura 37: "We have made this tree a scourge for the unjust. It grows in the nethermost part of Hell, bearing fruit like devils' heads: on it they shall feed, and with it they shall cram their bellies, together with draughts of scalding water.") Against which we threaten further restrictions on banking, unless China says no.

Gordon Brown disposes of considerable conventional and nuclear forces. But he plainly lacks the will to use even the former against Iran. So Ahmadinejad did not just cross his line in the sand but danced all over it hooting death to Israel. And Western leaders stood there pretending not to notice, the exquisite crowning touch in their ghastly public shaming.

When Iran tested its newest missiles on Monday, Britain's Foreign Secretary brushed it off as "part of an annual provocation" while Javier Solana, the European Union's babbler-in-chief, said in talks with Iran starting Thursday: "'Failure is clear -- if there is no more meetings it's failure ... Success is more difficult to judge." We want meetings, they want missiles. If both succeed, it will go ill with us.

So let me translate those newspaper stories into real world language. The Iranian government is building nuclear weapons so it can blow the Jews off the face of the earth, and our leaders have neither the spine to act nor the wit to perceive their own shameful paralysis. It's that bad.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

A piece on mine in the current Fraser Forum looks at means and ends in public policy.

[First published on Mercatornet.com] When Barack Obama's health reform program ran into serious trouble, a number of people triumphantly threw the race card onto the table. It promptly skidded off onto the floor.

President Obama gets some credit for this wholesome outcome. Having refused to run as the "black candidate" in 2008, he has good-naturedly brushed aside such cries of racism over health care in 2009.

It is a pity others could not do the same. Instead, the stakes were dramatically raised when Jimmy Carter told NBC's "Today" show "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man... because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

It is tempting to dismiss Carter as a mean-spirited old fool who never forgave Americans for voting him out after a single disastrous term. As the Wall St. Journal's "Best of the Web Today" wrote last year, "President Carter has turned himself into an international nuisance who aspires to be a menace." But his aspiration to be a menace on the subject of race and ObamaCare deserves attention even if the effect is merely to be a nuisance. For depicting opposition to the plan as primarily driven by bigotry risks blinding supporters of the plan to its real defects, maligns the electorate and, given the deep racial wounds in American history, attempts to poison the well of policy discourse.

Most opponents of the president's health care plan are not bigots. Moreover, most bigots who oppose the plan do not oppose it because they are bigots. In saying so I make no attempt to deny the obvious. Race continues to matter in American politics and on Election Day 2008, millions of votes were cast based on it. Curiously, most went to Barack Obama because almost anyone inclined to vote against him on the basis of race would have voted against a white person with his attitudes and policies as well. Even if they were thinking the ugly word starting with "n" as they voted, it didn't determine their vote. Remember, correlation is not causation.

It was not always so. As recently as the 1960s most white supporters of either major party were unreflectively racist. The most committed white supremacists were then Democrats, but either party would have suffered a catastrophic defeat if it had nominated a black person for president and race would have been the reason. By now, most of the dwindling number of serious white bigots have moved to the Republican camp though not always for racist reasons.

I am not mud-slinging here. Though no bigot, I would be a Republican if I were an American. But I must face the sad truth that some hard-core Republicans turned out to vote against Barack Obama because he is black who would otherwise have stayed home rather than support the maverick John McCain. But not many, because to the extent that they are hard-core Republicans they would have showed up to vote against any clearly liberal candidate anyway. It doesn't excuse their bigotry, but it neutralizes it as a factor in politics.

Moreover, their numbers were clearly dwarfed by the wave of first-time or reluctant voters, of both races, who turned out to vote for Mr. Obama precisely because he is black. Some were Black Panther wannabes and other left-wing lunatics with racist views as ugly as, if less immediately dangerous than, those of white supremacists. Others were inspired by the historical significance, within living memory of the "long hot summers" of the 1960s, of peacefully electing a black man who did not even dwell on race. As race-based votes go, those were pretty benign. But they were still race-based.

All these considerations also apply to the health care debate. Just as almost everyone who voted against Barack Obama because he was black in November 2008 would also have voted against him because he was a liberal Democrat, almost all those who might in principle object to his health care plan because he is black would have objected to it anyway on substantive grounds. They didn't like HillaryCare, which one might in desperation label sexist. But they'd have hated ObamaCare if Edward Kennedy had sponsored it, and they're not rabidly anti-Irish. Meanwhile quite a few people support the plan at least partly because they fear that its opponents are bigots.

This is no mere quibble. For one thing, if all non-bigoted opposition could be made to go away, the residual protests would be tiny and ineffective so racism is not the key factor. For another, to suggest that this sort of mass movement could spring up based on bigotry is to paint a false and slanderous picture of the American electorate.

After formerly obscure Republican Joe Wilson apologized to the president for shouting "You lie" during his over-hyped address to a joint session of Congress, House Democrats were inclined to let the matter be until the Congressional Black Congress insisted on action, at which point a party-line vote disapproved of the heckle. Hank Johnson, a black Democratic Congressman from Georgia, said "I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside intimidating people. That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked." But if that were not appalling nonsense, black men would not win Georgia Congressional elections or compel their colleagues to pass such resolutions.

The very fact that the charge of racism is so politically potent proves it is a spent political force. In years gone by "bigotry" was a cry of frustration not a war cry. Now the U.S. has a black president.

It also has an increasingly unpopular and very poorly designed health care reform plan. But the two are unrelated. Correlation is not causation, and it is not 1888 out there. Put that card away, and keep it there.