Opinion: Should the governor say this in Pittsburgh?

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Maybe you remember, it seems like a year ago, there was this former president who campaigned around South Carolina for days. He was the fellow Maya Angelou once called ‘the first black president,’ although he wasn’t really black.(A number of loyal Ticket readers remind us it was, indeed, Toni Morrison who said that not Ms. Angelou. Thanks.)

So this black but really white ex-president was campaigning hard for his wife and he appeared to inject the racial issue into the campaign in the state where the Civil War began. And he also seemed to suggest that somehow her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, was like a marginal candidate running solely on race as the Rev. Jesse Jackson did in the 1980s. And there was a lot of criticism directed toward the ex-president for bringing race in to help his wife win the Democratic primary, which she didn’t do in a big way.

So the former president got kind of quiet and said he was going to just promote his wife and not ‘defend’ her.

Now comes yet another white male supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton bringing up race....

in the crucial upcoming states of Pennsylvania, which votes April 22, and, right next door, Ohio, which votes March 4. After losing all three primaries Tuesday, the New York senator better win both Ohio and Pennsylvania or she’ll be stuck as a senator for longer than she planned.

‘You’ve got conservative whites here,’ Gov. Ed Rendell, a high-profile Clinton supporter and surrogate, volunteered to the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ‘And I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate.’ If there weren’t before, it seems like they just got permission from the white governor to feel that way now.

Then, Rendell, who is a former mayor of Philadelphia and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, brought up his 2006 reelection campaign against an African American Republican, former football star Lynn Swann.

‘I believe,’ said Rendell, ‘looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was -- well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking -- but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so. And that attitude exists. But on the other hand, that is counterbalanced by Obama’s ability to bring new voters into the electoral pool.’ He means black voters.

So it looks like the race issue has been introduced now up north too. Just not by the ex-president this time.

After the white governor’s remarks were widely distributed, his spokesman said, gee, he didn’t mean to offend anyone. ‘He was simply making an observation about the unfortunate nature of some parts of American society,’ Chuck Ardo said. ‘He wasn’t being critical, he wasn’t making accusations, but just being realistic.’

And the fact that his realistic remarks could appear to raise and/or provide permission for such feelings and help Sen. Clinton salvage her campaign are merely coincidental.

--Andrew Malcolm