Higher ground in endorsements

By Adrienne T. Washington (Contact) | Wednesday, October 22, 2008

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

For president of the United States, I endorse - no one. Not my job. Even if it were within my purview to suggest a better man or woman for the job of leading this country and this world out of its doldrums and disasters, what would it matter?

Nada. I'd be just another voice - that of a registered independent - among thousands whistling in the wicked blogosphere wind.

Leave the high-profile pronouncements to such prominent and prestigious figures as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a Republican who on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, as a "transformational" figure.

Now, that takes the stakes of political nods to "a ho notha level," as the MAD TV character says. But at what cost? To him? To other moderate or black Republicans?

As I wrote in a column in July, Mr. Powell's "brave" and "thoughtful" 6 1/2 minute endorsement was not unexpected. He, like a number of notable black Republicans at the time, were holding back on their support for their party's candidate, Sen. John McCain, in light of Mr. Obama's historic run for president. For some, their hesitancy came from their distaste for what they viewed as the negative and exclusionary direction in which their party seemed headed.

Deborah Burstion-Donbraye of Cleveland was among those Republican Party leaders who boldly stated her support for Mr. Obama. Not because the Illinois senator is biracial, but she said then that "I've been a Republican all my life but I don't see what bone with what meat [Republicans] are giving blacks to bite into."

On Tuesday, she bristled at the notion that black Republicans endorsed Mr. Obama purely for racial reasons.

"This is not a Jesse Jackson moment or an Al Sharpton moment," she said. "If [Mr. Obama] were a young, white politician and saying the same things and inspiring the same people, I'd vote for him against my party."

If you reduce a person to a single trait such as race or sex, something they can't do anything about, she explained, you take away all that they have done in their lives to become all that they are. "That is wrongheaded."