In August 2010, here in POLITICO, I proposed that President Barack Obama replace Vice President Joe Biden on the 2012 Democratic ticket with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I still think it is the wisest course of action.

And what about the GOP’s vice presidential intentions?

First the Democrats. Obama would need a little more of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s chutzpah to dump Biden. After watching Biden’s performance the past few years, Johnson would not have had difficulty moving him out and bringing in a stronger teammate — largely because it would be right for the Democratic Party and the country.

Consider LBJ’s maneuvering to appoint Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the Supreme Court. There was not a vacancy on the court — and none on the horizon. That was of no moment to Johnson. He took care of that minor complication in short order.

A master of political maneuvering, Johnson created this vacancy out of whole cloth by appointing young Ramsey Clark as U.S. attorney general and convincing his father, Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, to resign. If Clark had stayed on the court, he would have had to recuse himself from every case his son, the new Justice Department head, was involved in. Tom Clark left, and Marshall made history — again.

But the Democrats will have an Obama-Biden ticket in 2012.

Now, what about the other side of the ballot?

It looks increasingly likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. Seeing how he’s evolved ideologically during his political career, Romney must be careful when choosing his VP. The GOP base will see it as a signal of which Romney will lead the party during the general election.

Frankly, Romney needs a Southerner. It is the modern GOP’s base — and that base has yet to develop any real connection with Romney. He will need his candidate to bridge that gap, and Romney has little to no choice on this.

The most obvious running mates are Florida freshman Sen. Marco Rubio and the governor of my own commonwealth, Bob McDonnell.

First, Romney should take Rubio at his word that he doesn’t want to be on the ticket. Rubio’s instincts are right. It is too soon for him.

McDonnell, though, has the profile that conventional wisdom would say Romney needs. McDonnell is Southern, conservative, politically savvy, popular and suburban friendly in a must-win state. No one could blame Romney for making this sound electoral choice — which addresses every political calculus important this November.

I would not be surprised to see Romney’s people start spending time in Richmond, to check up on McDonnell.

Yet, I’m not sure this is a time that calls for the conventional.

What if Romney did in 2012 what Sen. John McCain tried to do in 2008? McCain, frankly, failed to reshape the mold. Romney, though, can succeed.

The answer to Romney’s search may well be sitting in Palo Alto, Calif., at Stanford University.

His success could come in the form of a petite, whip-smart, iron-willed woman who knows the world and America’s place in it better than most: Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state.

As political maneuvering goes, Johnson would let out a belly laugh at the political skill of a Romney-Rice pairing.

Rice was a darling of the Bush administration, one of the few who suffered minimal public scars and escaped minus the political revulsion some of her former colleagues still evoke. She knows foreign policy, which Romney does not. She understands the workings of Washington, also not Romney’s forte.

Rice, though, is not a Beltway captive, having spent most of her life outside the nation’s capital. She is of the West, having lived many years in California. Yet she also is a woman of the South, having come of age in Birmingham, Ala. — the daughter of a teacher and minister — during a time of segregation when that city earned the terrible nickname, Bombingham. She survived a tumultuous time in this nation’s history, facing violence and the loss of friends with grace and hope.

Rice is an American example.

She would break barriers. She would also bring national and international gravitas to the 2012 political discussion, which is desperately needed.

Obama-Biden versus Romney-Rice. What a campaign that would be!

The piece originally appeared in Politico on January 17, 2011: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71537.html

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In 1998, I was not quite in sync with literary icon Toni Morrison when she wrote of President Bill Clinton: “White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president.”

She was making a provocative point about the aggressively negative treatment Clinton received from wide swaths of the media and political world. Her specific proof was not off base, if tongue-in-cheek.

“Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime,” Morrison wrote. “After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

But regardless, it seemed a bit disjointed to use the moniker, “first black president,” for a man who — while sympathetic to the circumstances of Americans of African descent — had not and could not experience what it actually means to live as a black man.

So, no, I couldn’t get on board with the notion that Clinton was our first black president — even if the statement was made almost solely to spur political conversation.

But as I had learned in Virginia during the fall of 1989 — and then through travels across the country — Americans should not be underestimated. I felt voters were closer to electing a black president than conventional wisdom suggested.

The national electorate confirmed my hunch in November 2008, choosing Barack Obama, a darker-skinned man of mixed racial heritage, to be chief executive. He is a gentleman I proudly campaigned nationwide to elect.

All of a sudden, during both Morrison’s and my lifetime — not just our children’s — America elected a black president, in a spirit of hope and optimism painted in votes from all hues across the human rainbow.

Yet here we sit, more than three years after Obama’s win, and too many people are pulling me aside in private to ask why his standing in the African-American community has softened since his Inauguration. They also question whether the reduced excitement among young and new voters — with that lack of enthusiasm from African-Americans — might hinder Obama’s 2012 campaign.

This has forced me to think back to Morrison’s comment.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

Has that happened? I am forced to say, “No” — especially when comparing Morrison’s metaphorical first black president to the actual first black president.

Think back on a small slice of merely the upper levels of the Clinton administration, and remember how many Cabinet agencies the Arkansan had named African-Americans to lead: Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown, Army Secretary Togo West, who succeeded Brown at Veteran Affairs, Office and Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines and Director of National Drug Control Policy Lee Brown. Clinton also regularly cited Vernon Jordan as a respected adviser and strategist.
Clinton may not have been the nation’s first black president — but he did make appointments like he was. Obama would do well to look a little closer at the Clinton template.

I have heard any number of people worry what will happen to the estimation of African-Americans if Obama is not reelected. I remind them, come Jan. 20, 2017, at the latest, he will not be president — regardless of what happens next fall.

I also ask them to consider what legacy Obama will leave — no matter when he vacates the Oval Office. What will he have left for black Americans beyond an electoral point in time? Who will follow him? Who will be the second to Obama’s first, and what has he done to help prepare for that?

The answers have not been made obvious for the public to embrace.

In discussing this with my college class at Virginia Commonwealth University, one astute young man raised his hand and asked me the natural follow-up question: “Governor, what did you do when you had the chance?”

It’s a good question. One I don’t mind handling because of the record my team and I built when entrusted with Virginia’s executive office.

We hired Jacqueline Epps to be the first African-American head of the Virginia Retirement System, a multibillion-dollar enterprise; Eddie Moore, as the first African-American state treasurer; James Dyke, first African-American secretary of education; and Ruby Martin, the first African-American secretary of administration. We appointed the most black members to state boards and commissions ever seen in Virginia’s history.

We did not govern solely for any single specific segment of Virginia’s population. But we also did not ignore the responsibility and opportunity to open the doors of government leadership to all.

The third branch, the judiciary, though, provides the greatest layer of concern when it comes to Obama’s record of appointments. A person with even the smallest understanding of the Civil Rights era knows many, if not most, of its significant achievements were spurred by the judiciary — the Supreme Court in particular. Thurgood Marshall’s voice made a difference arguing cases before the court and then as a long-term member after his appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson. His sensibility is missing, and it is needed again.

For any talents Justice Clarance Thomas may bring to the table — he does not use them to advance the causes that Marshall spent a lifetime fighting for. Marshall needs a successor. Obama’s actions say he believes Thomas fills that role. Others of us urge him to reconsider.

The question comes up in every presidential election: “What kind of justices will you appoint to the Supreme Court?” With the first vacancy during Obama’s term, conventional wisdom suggested that he needed to court the Latino vote and name a Latino to curry favor with that growing electorate. We waited to be surprised — but to no avail.

When the second vacancy occurred — a rarity because few presidents get to appoint more than one, and some not even that — we again had high expectations that an African-American would be appointed.

When not a single African-American — at least publicly — was seriously considered, certain presumptions began to arise. The first is that there were none qualified; the second is that there were none psychologically or politically suited.

There are too many persons, too numerous to name, who stand in rebuttal to such nonsense. Don’t give up, wait until the next one comes around, that might be your turn.

Clinton, among others, seeded the government with those who could grow to fill this role. Obama needs to take advantage of previous seasons’ sowing of the fields.

By birth and life experience, Clinton cannot lay claim to the title of first black president — as Morrison knighted him. But Obama needs to work harder to make it less obvious that Clinton, in governing deed, actually deserves it more that the 44th president does.

When I arrived in the Ivory Coast in the early 1990s on a tour of seven African nations, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the first president of that country, greeted me. He was instrumental in the efforts leading to the decolonization of Africa.

“I have waited for you,” Houphouet-Boigny said through an interpreter. He meant this to show his pride in seeing America elect a governor of African descent.

In reflecting on what he said to me, I, too, have waited for a long time. If the Republicans persist in their “presidential candidate for the month” campaign, then I’m correct in assuming Obama will most likely be reelected — and that we are correct in reminding him that we have waited.

The piece originally appeared in Politico on December 12, 2011:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70302.html

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Richmond — When I received a phone call earlier this week asking me to have a frank discussion about the president’s problem with independents — specifically, as to how acute the issue is in Virginia, an important swing state — I wanted to share the sense of unease that I am hearing from my neighbors around the commonwealth and around the country.

But the call did not come from anyone affiliated with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or folks in Chicago. That call came from James Hohmann of Politico, who co-wrote a terrific piece about the president’s difficulty with independents in the commonwealth, and by extension around the country.

I hope the White House political department and the Obama campaign are doing work at least as in depth as Hohmann and his cowriter Glenn Thrush have done. Such yeomen’s work is necessary if the president is going to match his 2008 win of Virginia’s electoral votes in 2012.

To be blunt, if it is not, he will not win.

I have observed and been involved with politics for many years, but it does not take any special skill to note that Virginians are not quite happy. Their mood is unsettled. And, as many a politician has learned over the years, Virginians are an independent lot quite ready to  look for new leadership when they feel that is what the hour demands.

President Obama, a Democrat, won Virginia in 2008 for the very same reason Republican Bob McDonnell won the gubernatorial election in 2009: Independents vested the two campaigns with an overwhelming number of their votes. They were not being fickle by switching from a Democrat one November and choosing a Republican the next. No … they were being discerning.

People for decades have talked about my home state as a conservative bastion. And it is true that the temperament of Virginians is moderate conservative. But more than anything else Virginians are independent. They are smart. They consider. They weigh. They decide. They do not blindly follow any party or ideology. Instead they are deeply rooted in a political mindset that values prudence, pragmatism, and results.

That is what they saw from Barack Obama in 2008. Virginians — like many people around the country — thought they saw our home state’s values wrapped in the Obama message of hope and change. The people of my commonwealth hold practical ideals of the utmost importance, but that does not mean they do not dream, too. They wanted to dream with this president, so they gave him their votes at a time the economy was beginning to falter. Surely his middle-class success story would lead him to put their everyday concerns at the top of Washington’s agenda.

Three years later, I hear many Virginia independents wondering if that is indeed what happened. They are not sure. And to win in 2012, that is the concern that this president must address between now and November 6, 2012.

Is he doing that with his jobs plan? I, unfortunately, am not quite so sure.

Let’s say, as is possible, that the absolute worst happens legislatively with the jobs plan the president is touting: It does not pass. Then what? The message we seem to be getting from Washington is “nothing.” Instead of working to meet the dire needs of Americans during a time of widespread economic distress we will be in a permanent campaign of charges, attacks, and promises — with the voters being assured that DC will get back to work — finally — in January of 2013.

Will Virginia’s independents — or independents in any state — reward that as the result of the historic vote we cast in 2008? I am not sure I would answer that question is “yes.”

This is an election year in Virginia, we are electing all 140 members of the Virginia General Assembly. What is the mood of independents as they are contemplating those races?

The facts tell us that they are not ready to jump back on the Obama bandwagon yet. There are quite a few hotly contested legislative races that will hinge upon the decisions that independents make in the election booth. Control of the Senate of Virginia rests upon them. Where were the Democrats running in those races when the president’s bus tour rolled into southern and eastern Virginia?  Were they standing outside its doors ready to clasp hands with their presumptive 2012 standard bearer.  No. The House of Delegates Democratic leader has gone as far as to pay for a television advertisement to tell voters in his district he is not anything like Barack Obama. It is chock full of independent-minded people.

And he’s not alone in employing that tactic. My local newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, recently ran a story highlighting the members of the president’s own party who do not feel he is a help to them this fall.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the canary in the mineshaft.

Most tellingly, though, where was the president’s political partner, Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine, while Obama makes his stops in a state where Kaine is waging a nip-and-tuck race? Not by Obama’s side.

Tim Kaine knows the risks involved with his close association with Obama. They both need each other’s votes. They cannot afford the perception that one is running away from the other. It is very tricky business, and no doubt Kaine and the president have discussed the unique ramifications of their tightly knit personal and professional relationships. They are friends. That dynamic is another reason 2012 will not be like 2008.

As I have said before, and will continue to say, I want to see this president reelected. I expressed that sentiment to him personally this summer. But without independent people like the ones who live in Virginia, it will be difficult for that to happen. Obama needs to reconnect with and give them back their desire for hopes and the ability to dream. It is not too late, but it must be done.

I was in Washington this past weekend attending a board of trustees meeting at Howard University. I did not attend any of the events during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner. After I heard about President Barack Obama’s speech, I was glad I didn’t attend.

I did, though, have occasion to talk with people from around the country who were there, including several senior members of the CBC. News organizations, such as United Press International, have written headlines proclaiming, “Obama Rallies Congressional Black Caucus” or the one written on CBS News’s website, “Obama at Black Caucus dinner: ‘I need your help.’” I’m not so sure those in attendance took it as a rallying cry or a rationale for solidarity. If either of those was the purpose, the president was ill-advised on how to achieve his goals.

When I was growing up, I would often hear older men say, when they thought they had been offended by the words of another person, “I almost told you to —— —- —— —” — leaving out the least polite portions of that sentence. They would use that tactic to avoid being considered vulgar and not showing proper respect.

Prior to the weekend, I exchanged points of view with a number of African-American supporters about Obama’s reelection chances. Collectively, they expressed the hope that he would use his speech at the CBC awards banquet to fight for those things for which he campaigned; many thought he had been too compromising with Republicans and had little, if anything, to show for it. They felt the administration has not produced the positive results many expected, especially for African-Americans. They wanted him to bear witness to a more productive future by just, as the song goes, giving black voters “some sort of sign.”

Few can deny the group hardest hit by the nation’s continuing economic downturn — with unemployment, increase in poverty level numbers and overall lost opportunities — has been the group of people represented in Congress by CBC members.

Because of the Bush tax-cut extensions, the bank bailouts, stimulus spending and the debt ceiling compromises, many average Americans — including African-Americans — have wondered aloud, “When does our time come?”

I remain a supporter of the president’s reelection. I have personally communicated that to him. I know that he believes that. I hope that the nation’s current economic ills can be alleviated and ultimately cured, utilizing the vision and capacity for leadership that he so brilliantly displayed during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Nowhere was that excitement felt more deeply and intensely than in the hearts and souls of America’s most historically neglected people. Those citizens have shown through perseverance and rugged determination their toughness and an uncanny ability to survive — whatever was strewn in their paths. They gave their 2008 votes to Obama with joy and a renewed sense of optimism.

Many, however, still have the perennial question resonating in their minds — one they expected to abandon to history’s scrap heap — about when the powerful will turn their attention to the marginalized: “How long must we wait?” They didn’t expect to continue that line of inquiry with this president.

One would expect Obama to know theirs is not just a plaintive cry or whimper but a seeking of redress. A redress made to each and all who have been there before him. That’s what they thought they would get from his election and administration. To the contrary, though, they look at a man they thought would lead then through the wilderness and must ask, “If not now, when?”

I believe in the president’s best intentions. I give him the benefit of any doubt. But when he spoke to the CBC — and by inference the people its members represent — and told them with an annoyed pitch to “Quit whining!” he thundered words the dispirited do not need to hear during this difficult hour of America’s history.

If this group of struggling citizens are not re-energized, given renewed hope, by witnessing positive and realistic achievements, then even the seemingly weak field of Republican challengers could produce a winner next November. Each poll portends what I hope will not become a stark “anybody but Obama” atmosphere when people step into the voting booth to cast presidential ballots.

There is also the possibility that some of that group of people I have described might not share my view of the president’s best intentions. They might very well think and say something like what I heard while growing up. I heard you, Mr. President, and if I did not have such great respect for you, I would have told you to “—— —- —— —.”

The piece originally appeared in Politico on September 28, 2011: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64530_Page2.html

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(Speech Delivered August 16, 2011)

It is good to be in Martha’s Vineyard, and it is good to be back in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Twenty years ago I was settling into my second year as governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The country and the world were getting used to having a black American sitting in a chair many thought they might not live to see a person of African descent hold in this country. And I will say, it is an honor to be the first black person to have been elected to hold the office of governor of an American state.

But, I also want to say, for almost twenty years I was unsatisfied when people introduced me as the “first” black person elected governor in the United States. How can one have a first without a second? For too long, I was a caucus of one. Then in 2006, the voters of this state truly made me the first by adding a second, Governor Deval Patrick, who is now settling into his second term as chief executive of this commonwealth.

The election of one black governor is fine, but it could be an anomaly. The election of two is the beginning of a pattern. So I am happy to travel to Massachusetts, again. My home state, Virginia, was first, but often second can be as important to establishing a trend. Good of you Massachusetts for helping to set that trend in stone by electing — and re-electing — Governor Patrick.

Which brings us to 2011.

Since 1989, I have gotten a question I am sure Governor Patrick must have to answer constantly, as many of you in this room must often have to answer it: Have black people in America “arrived”?

Two black men have been elected governor of states. The United States Senate has counted black men and a black woman as part of its membership. Black men have sat — and do sit — in the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives. I will point out that has been the case for both parties. And most glaringly and obviously, the people elected a black man to serve as president of the United States of America.

So, have we “arrived?”

I don’t think we will ever find the answer to that question by looking at political leadership  data points.

The health and advancement of a community of people can’t be judged by whether any particular man or woman holds a single seat in a boardroom in New York or even an oval room in Washington. To do so is too easy, too lazy, and leaves too many people behind.

Our view needs to be more layered and more complex than that.

I do not minimize or denigrate the important electoral and governmental mile markers that note the advancement of black people in America, and truly the nation as a whole. It would be silly of me to do that, because it would minimize the great thing done by my close friends and neighbors in Virginia, not to mention by voters nationally two decades later.

But I do challenge citizens to take a broader view of how to judge where we as a country are on the road to providing  full equality.

As slavery ended, the enunciation of the Emancipation Proclamation served as the ringing of a big bell. The sound of that bell announced to enslaved Americans in rebelling states that they were finally to be given what should be a natural right for all men and women, freedom.

But as our people were to see over the next few decades, despite President Lincoln’s proclamation being enshrined in the Constitution, it was not yet a full American freedom that had been bestowed in practical fact to match the beautiful words.

What was needed was a second ringing of liberty’s bell for black Americans. That happened in 1954 with the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, and continued through the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts.

Has the bell been rung since then? Certainly it has. As I pointed out earlier, a former Confederate state elected a black governor, and the entire country elected a black president.

Those points in time represent a further ringing of the bell.

We must ask, though, are those events enough of a foundation for us to stand upon them and loudly to proclaim that black people in America have “arrived”?

While I honor the progress we have made on issues of equality — perhaps more than any other nation on the planet — the answer to that last question is, “No.” Despite all the great advancements of the past 150 years, full equality and recognition have not yet been met.

I stress that Brown and the election of a black president were great and necessary moments. But we must, as a people, recognize that eternal vigilance is the price of our American freedom.

We prize this nation’s mores and values that push us continually to live up to the ideal of freedom — sometimes despite ourselves — but they are not easy or to be taken as a given. We must work toward them everyday, otherwise they will wither.

No single event can or will cement freedom and equality alone. As vital as the Emancipation Proclamation was, it took many years of fighting and effort on the part of Americans, black and white — some of whom lost their lives during the struggle — before its words found real effect in the lives of many former slaves’ children and grandchildren.

I will go further and say it is wrong to look at a single event, even the election of a black governor or a black president, and say that event means black people or minorities of any hue have “arrived.” To do so would cause us to let down our guard — to lessen our vigilance. And were that to happen, American freedom would be in danger.

As a matter of fact, we must specifically acknowledge on a regular basis that no one event is enough for us to claim “arrival.” And in the process, we must use big, historic moments — such as the election of a black governor or president — to educate the next generation and beyond about what has been done and what still needs to be done.

This truly is a continuing project in community building that none of us has any right to cease. The question of the next few decades is how to march forward during this ongoing struggle.

What my generation and the president’s generation behind mine have done fairly well is demand and gain political power in the halls of Congress, in the states, and even in the nation’s executive mansion.

I learned, while serving for 16 years in the state Senate of Virginia, that the people always are ahead of the “leaders.”

The “leaders” said I was crazy to run for the state Senate in 1969 because no person of color had served in that body for nearly a century. The people proved them wrong.

The “leaders” said I was crazy to believe Virginia would be the first state in the Union legislatively to declare a state holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Supposedly, the people of Virginia wouldn’t stand for it. It took me eight years to get both house of the Virginia General Assembly to pass it and to have a governor sign it — but it did happen. Did the people of Virginia riot in the streets? No. That holiday is celebrated to this day in Virginia in peace and harmony, befitting its honoree.

When I said I was going to run to be the commonwealth of Virginia’s lieutenant governor, there were cries followed by much anguish amongst the “leaders,” many of whom publicly called themselves my friends. They said my mere presence on the ballot would not only cause the defeat of the entire Democratic statewide ticket, but also the loss of the Virginia legislature to the opposing party. The people did not agree on Election Day — the entire Democratic statewide ticket won, and we maintained solid leadership of the General Assembly.

At each step, the “leaders” did not trust in their own people. The people, on the other hand, proved they were ahead of where those with honorifics and and titles believed them to be.

How has it mattered that people who look like me and my ancestors have attained political power? I would like to talk about some examples of how that has mattered.

(1.) When I became governor of Virginia, the Confederate flag was still used as an official symbol by the commonwealth’s National Guard. I decided that had to change. I didn’t set up a commission or have my counsel study it to death.  I made a phone call and acted liked the state’s commander-in-chief. I asked the adjutant general of Virginia if my understanding of the use of the Confederate flag was correct. Once he acknowledged that it was, I informed him he would need to remove it in toto. He began the process of following that order within 20 minutes. There was no hand wringing or worry. There was only action, as I exercised the power afforded to me by the people of Virginia.

(2.) Many of you know the story of Allen Iverson’s arrest when he was a high school student, following a fight at a bowling alley where he happened to be the most visible person in the room. The arrest and conviction did not meet my definition of justice. I didn’t have to ask anyone whether I should right that wrong. I didn’t have to consult with experts about what to do. I had the power to pardon Iverson, so I did. It was the right thing to do.

(3.) April is Confederate history month, and governors of Virginia issue statements about that era of American and the commonwealth’s history. I decided to tell that story in a way most were not used to a governor of Virginia discussing the Civil War. Legendary Associated Press writer Bob Lewis later referred to how I had taken a different approach to writing about that war. I didn’t want it done in a romantic fashion — I wanted a discussion of the pain and suffering faced during that time. Since I was the governor, that is exactly what happened, because I had the power.

The accumulation and use of power matters — it must be done humbly and be used for the greater good — and it must be done after taking heed of how one gains broad-based, mainstream power. And black Americans are, indeed, getting more practiced at how to do that.

Am I saying  we have done enough in this realm? Should we be satisfied with what he have done up to this point? Am I declaring victory? The answer to all three questions I just posed is, “No.” But we have a rough idea, concrete examples, of the difficult path it takes to be successful in the political and governmental arenas.

What must be done now is to search for and develop a template for how black Americans can achieve broader economic power.

That is important and needed because the veneer of elected political power without accompanying widespread economic power is not effective or sustainable.

We can point to black men who have led Fortune 500 companies, and many black men and women serve in significant leadership roles in corporate and non-profit America. But in many places where they work everyday they are a lonely breed, often standing as one or two in an organization of hundreds or more, forced to carry the hopes and identity of a people, with little help shouldering that burden. They can’t carry the economic future of an entire community on their backs in the small numbers that exist today.

They are the beginnings of the effort to create black economic power, but they need help. We must give it to them, for the health of black America, and all of America.

People often say that money is the mother’s milk of politics, and that is true. But it is more important to recognize that money is even more so the mother’s milk of pure power. And with effective economic power comes the ability to demand and sustain the equality gained from having political power.

How do we set our young people on the journey to achieving economic power? What is the key ingredient to grabbing and holding economic power? That is easy: Education is the key. No dumb person ever made a million dollars or saw it grow.

It is our responsibility to instill a value of education in the next generation. We have to do that. They have to see us reading. They have to see us involved in their homework and school life. They have to see us exhibiting a sense of curiosity that will become infectious. That is the main ingredient in economic power that we must stir in early, and nurture it to a lifelong simmer.

To paraphrase a famous saying: Where there is no education the people perish.

Where there is no education there is no economic power. And when there is no economic power, the gains that can be made by the exercise of political power will be ephemeral.

Have we “arrived”?

I happened to be scanning the TV last week and chanced upon an appearance at the Apollo theater in Harlem by Tracy Morgan, a comedian of color. I was shocked and stunned by what I heard. Not only did he make fun of and denigrate a number of young white women who have disappeared or been abducted or disappeared during the past several years, he then made a point to return to his schtick of disparaging people of color. And the mixed audience laughed and seemingly enjoyed what it was seeing.

Morgan said he had earlier gone to the White House and checked on President Obama, who assured Morgan that he, Obama, was still the nigger who knew what to do with the gun Obama was said to show Morgan when the president pulled his coat back to reveal a weapon. Morgan gleefully said something to the effect of how glad he is they we niggers know how to look out for ourselves. The audience roared its approval.

None of that performance was the least bit funny. You can’t simultaneously run with the foxes and hunt with the hounds. The masquerade of people like Morgan is over, it’s time to take the mask off.

Also on the TV screen that same night was an old Clint Eastwood movie, “A Few Dollars more.” Most of you are too young to remember that Hattie McDonnell’s portrayals  of characters like the ones in “Gone with the Wind,” or Stepin Fetchit, Willie Best, Butterfly McQueen, and sad numbers of others. Those characters did not show our people in other than a denigrating light — as persons who lacked intelligence. But in 2011, people like Morgan now are doing was done during an earlier era, to paraphrase that Eastwood title, “For a Few Dollars More.”

Recently Philadelphia’s mayor, a man of color, spoke in his home church about the need for young people to dress, speak, and act in a more appropriate manner to better compete for good paying jobs. Mayor Michael Nutter is a member in good standing of that church. He was married there. He attends services there regularly. And despite those facts, he was chastised in an Op/Ed piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer for going too far by saying things I would call constructive criticism. Criticism that might save the lives of some young people or keep them out of jail.

And you know of the criticism heaped upon Bill Cosby when he called upon our young people and parents to show greater responsibility. That criticism has tuned 180 degrees since

Even though the people — black, white, and all colors of the human rainbow — elected a black man to be president the answer is, “No,” we have not arrived. And we can never be satisfied, otherwise any gains we have made will begin to melt into history. I don’t want to see that, and I am sure no one in this room does, either.

I found a shocking statistic, one that we all need to share with any and everyone who will listen: Former slaves, those freed by President Lincoln’s proclamation on  January 1, 1863, could read and write at a higher rate 15 years after slavery than their descendants can today.

That is a damning, unacceptable fact. We cannot sustain political power if that remains true. We can’t create greater economic power if that remains true. Equality for no one in this nation is secure if that remains true, no matter their skin color.

We can do better than that, and we must. Doing so is properly living up to our responsibility to protect the American Experiment.

Have we “arrived”? A higher literacy rate among former slaves than the one that exists among black Americans today necessitates that the answer to that question is, “No.” But it should not freeze us in fear. It should be the fire that spurs us to action.

The story is told about the prophet Abraham being told by his sons that the wells of water that were so essential to their existence had dried up. The sons felt hopeless and forsaken. Abraham exhorted them to re-dig the wells.

We have work left to be done, but generations of giants before us did so much heavy work that we were able to see a black man elected president in 2008.

We can continue to do our part by making sure that other black men and women have the ability to read about it — and can support their children as we race to see whom the second black president will be. One of them will need to have the privilege of being the second who truly bestows the title, “first,” on Barack Obama — the second black president who establishes the pattern.

I am very happy to be today in Governor Deval Patrick’s Massachusetts, home of the second elected black governor. Thank you, and let’s re-dig the wells.

The U.S. government can now meet its obligations. A deal has been struck between Democrats and Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The crisis we have been forced to live through these past few weeks has been averted — for the time being.

Yet this is no time for a celebration. Everyone in Washington walks away embarrassed — and literally walks away since they are going on a long summer vacation.

Meanwhile, voters must now look in the mirror and realize we were deluded in believing that we have the nation’s biggest brains working on our national problems. It is obvious we don’t.

The political left and right are both upset with the bargain struck. The right wanted more cuts, initiated more quickly. Progressives wanted more revenue, raised in the form of higher taxes from the wealthy. Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus now wonder if they have a friend in the White House. A lot of the participants feel like they were left on the wrong side of this bargain.

But don’t look inside the Beltway for who really lost.

The people are the biggest losers in this unnecessary mess America just lived through. And the people will continue to lose — until there is widespread consensus that the system needs serious repair. This country needs a long, vigorous, honest debate about how to strengthen itself for the future.

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster — à la “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers.

The federal government has a spending problem. That is obvious. The deal struck included an increase in the debt ceiling — the statutory amount of money our government is limited to borrowing. But citizens need to understand what that means in concrete terms: The national government’s debt ceiling, which Congress just increased, allows the Treasury to borrow $15 trillion or more in accumulated debt to meet federal spending obligations.

That is a very large number — and every cent must be paid back.

Yes, this country’s government has a debt problem — and it must be fixed. If we do not, future increases in the debt ceiling won’t matter. No one will likely want to take our IOUs, because they will become worthless — and that will wreck the world economy, and our children’s and grandchildren’s futures with it.

Look at the havoc caused by the potential default of Greece. As large as Greece’s economy is, it is small compared with the U.S. economy. If we ever get to the point where we might be unable pay our bills, as Greece did, that will have historically bad implications of the type we can’t even imagine.

Greece’s European neighbors were able step in and bolster the weak foundation on which Greece’s free-spending budget was based. It would be difficult for any country, or intergovernmental organization, to rescue an economy the size of the U.S. if investors were ever to lose faith in our bonds because of our enormous debt.

Let’s put this in simple terms: The federal government borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends. That is ultimately as dangerous as it is unsustainable.

Is there enough capital in the world to continue financing our current spending spree? It is hard to argue with those who say there is not.

We must get our house in order — starting today. The consequences of doing anything else are too dire.

So what did members of Congress do right after the necessary evil of increasing the debt limit? How did they dig in to begin paying down the mountains of debt they voted to create? What was the first prong of the national legislature’s strategy for increasing confidence in the future of the U.S. economy and solidifying our ability to live within our governmental means?

Congress began a five-week vacation.

Few problems of historic proportions are solved while those who are supposed to be tackling them are on vacation.

During the earliest days of our constitutional government, members had to leave D.C. during the summer — and not because the Capitol lacked air conditioning. Those elected to Congress were paid part-time salaries for part-time work. Between 1789 and 1855, the salary was $6 a day. So members had to go back home to tend to their businesses, their law practices or their farms.

Now members make a full-time salary — $174,000 a year — because, in theory, they are asked for full-time service. Yet they still insist on long breaks from the nose-to-the-grindstone work that must take place in face-to-face meetings in D.C.

We all understand that they must go home to speak with constituents about what they are doing on Capitol Hill. But five weeks? When there is grave business that must be done and sober decisions that must be made right now?

When Congress does return — in mid-September — we will be treated to the spectacle of 12 members evenly divided among the two parties trying to recommend more than a trillion dollars in cuts from the budget. To which all others are expected to agree.

All of a sudden, these people — who are most responsible for the problems we must now solve — are going to become apostles of fiscal discipline? We’ll see how well that works out.

The people are rightfully dubious, though, and have raised serious questions about spending-cut triggers and who will control enforcement.

We, the people, need to demand that Washington do better — largely by becoming more involved in the process. And likely by sending new people to Congress, who can help what seems to be those relatively few members who are blessed with qualification, commitment and the will to do so.

The piece originally appeared in Politico on August 4, 2011: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60589.html