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In case you’ve missed it, there’s an argument raging in America about the argument that’s raging in America. A headline on a New York Times blog summed up the argument about the argument pretty well: “Is It Because He’s Black?” For many people, this is what you — or, well, Jefferson anyway — might call self-evident.

He’s our first black president. The level of hostility toward him is, by any account, astonishing. Barack Obama had been president for seven months when, in the August month of rage, he was painted (literally) as Hitler. He’s routinely called a commie, socialist, fascist, Kenyan-born usurper.

There’s every reason to believe race is a factor in how many view Obama — and not just because such yahoos as Glenn Beck accuse the biracial Obama of hating white people. Let’s just say there are hundreds of years of ugly American history to rely on.

And when Joe Wilson — a South Carolina congressman who was once a Strom Thurmond aide and is on record as having defended the Confederate flag — shouts “you lie” to Obama from the House floor, it’s no stretch to consider race as a motive.

And so, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote this about Wilson’s outburst: “But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”

Wilson — now the officially rebuked Wilson — said he let his emotions get away from him. Dowd guessed that the reason Wilson got so emotional was because he couldn’t stand the idea of being lectured by a smart black man.

Fair? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about Wilson to say. Neither, I’m guessing, does Dowd. But even if it is partly true, it’s more likely a half-truth. Life, generally speaking, is more complicated than that — not quite so black and white. Motives rarely come so neatly wrapped.

So let me make the counterargument. I’ll make it in two words: Hillary Clinton. Let’s do a little thought experiment.

What if Clinton had beaten Obama in the down-to-the-wire Democratic primary? What if she had gone on to beat the hapless John McCain in the general election? Where would we be right now? Here’s my guess: We’d be in virtually the same place.

Sure, we’d be talking about misogyny instead of racism. And we’d be talking about gender instead of color. Racism is obviously the great stain on our nation. But anger is the currency of the day, and it pays the bills on much of cable-TV news and talk radio.

Much of Obama’s campaign was based on the notion that people were tired of the divide, tired of the fighting, tired of false choices. It’s how a majority voted. And despite what you may suppose, Obama still commands a majority in the polls.

But as American University law professor Darren Hutchinson points out in his Dissenting Justice blog, it was naive to believe that the country would unite around Obama in a new post-partisan America.

We can now safely say it’s naive to think anyone is going to bridge the great national divide any time soon. It’s not how the game is played in the right-wing media world.

Let’s imagine what the game would look like if Clinton were in the Oval Office instead of Obama. It wouldn’t be the same White House — for one thing, you’d have Bill as First Big Dog — but you’d have to think we’d be having similar arguments. You’d still have the bailout. You’d still have a stimulus plan. These were not controversial ideas, unless you were in the Republican caucus or among those inclined to attend antitax tea parties.

Clinton would, of course, be moving ahead on health care reform. That’s her signature issue. I can’t tell you exactly what form her plan would have taken, but I guarantee that you’d be hearing the words “socialized” and “medicine” in every sentence from every critic.

Maybe you remember when Clinton was merely a first lady, when she was already Rush Limbaugh’s favorite feminazi, when she was being accused — unless it was her husband — of killing Vince Foster. And don’t forget Ron Brown. Bill Clinton was — I think I have it right — a draft-dodging, drug-running, murdering liar. And if Ken Starr wasn’t around, the angry white males were out in force.

The anger didn’t die during the George W Bush presidency, of course. Hating Bush became a cottage industry — and, yes, there are the truthers who still insist 9/11 was an inside job.

So, Obama wants to kill Granny. He’s a communist. He’s the Antichrist. Why do you suppose we keep hearing this stuff? Maybe a better question is why, after all this time, we still have to ask.



Mike Littwin is a columnist for The Denver Post .