Barack and Hillary Have Faced "Enough" Questions

Enough with "enough."

Is Barack Obama black enough? Is Hillary Clinton feminine enough?

Those were actual questions asked during the Democratic hopefuls' CNN-YouTube debate last week. Happily, the candidates were, well, political enough not to respond: "Gee, I don't know, bro'. Maybe I should pop another blackness pill." Or, "I'm fem enough to beat the band, buster! Wanna see?"

No, Sen. Obama answered instead, "You know, when I'm catching a cab in Manhattan … in the past, I think I've given my credentials." Sen. Clinton, for her part, said, "I couldn't run as anything other than a woman." Well, duh.

It's not that Mrs. Clinton is dumb. The question is dumb. Worse, it's unfair. You never hear: "John Edwards, you're handsome. But are you handsome enough ?" "Mike Gravel, you've got a funny last name, but … funny enough ?"

If we asked enough "enough" questions, maybe they would start sounding less suspicious. But the reason we only hear it with Clinton and Obama is because of the stereotypes still dogging women and blacks.

"In America, black history is really sort of boiled down to a history of suffering," said Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College. "So if you don't come out of that, you're an unsettling figure."

You're especially unsettling if you don't look as if you've suffered one iota. That's why the half-white, Harvard-educated senator brought up the cabbies-don't-stop-for-me-either story — to show that he has suffered for his blackness, too. He understood that was the real question being asked.

When Clinton gets asked about her feminine credentials, there's another back story at work: "Women in politics can be motherly," Prof. Burke said, citing Golda Meir. "Or they can be the masculine woman." He mentioned Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno.

Clinton doesn't fit into either of these categories.

She's more like the new executive woman: professional, attractive, unapologetically smart.

"Younger men have been working with that type of woman most of their lives," Prof. Burke said. "She's the sort of desirable woman down the hall that men sort of have a crush on." (They do? Hooray!) But those women are harder to find in American politics, leaving Sen. Clinton without an easy slot to fit into. In marketing terms, she doesn't have a recognizable brand.

"People always identify with brands," said marketing consultant Travis Sheridan. "If you drive a Kia or a Toyota or a Bentley, each one of those has a different social identifier." Customers know exactly what they're getting. But what if you're a Bentlota? Or a Volks-Royce? That's what Clinton and Obama are — new breeds.

People don't know what to make of them yet.

Trying to get a handle on exactly how Americans are perceiving the top candidates, the trend-spotting department at J. Walter Thompson conducted an almost surreal survey. It asked 681 voters, "Which characters would the candidates be if they were on 'Gilligan's Island'?"

Overwhelmingly, Obama was seen as the Professor, and Clinton as Mrs. Thurston Howell III. Rudy Giuliani and, to a lesser extent, John McCain both came back as the Skipper, Mitt Romney was trending toward Thurston Howell himself, and John Edwards was, I'm sorry to report, Gilligan.

In other parts of the survey, voters identified Clinton as a Lexus or a Jaguar and said that if she were a restaurant, she'd be a Morton's Steakhouse or, possibly, an Olive Garden.

This makes Sen. Clinton a millionaire ditz with great handling and breadsticks, while Sen. Obama is a smart guy stuck on an island.

Is the Professor black enough? Is the Lexus lady feminine enough? Are we all out of our minds trying to slice and dice the candidates this way?

Yes.

Uh. That's the end of this article. Yes . Until we stop trying to pigeonhole our candidates — are they this enough, that enough? — we'll miss everything else we should be paying attention to.

Yes.

Lenore Skenazy is a contributing editor at The New York Sun. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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