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In this election year, like all that came before it, candidates will jockey for position by claiming superiority in their mastery of the issues that matter most to the electorate. Having no such mastery, however, the candidates will simply resort to spouting rhetoric about a red herring. This year, that red herring is race.

In the last two elections, the rhetoric was pretty innocuous tripe. We felt each other’s pain, built bridges to the 21st century, needed change, lit a thousand points of light, and looked for a stronger America.

Whatever.

There was at least one positive thing about the past empty rhetoric: there was no mistaking it for what it was. When Bob Dole prattled on about whatever it was Bob Dole prattled on about, it was obvious he was venting monotone hot air. This rhetoric was substituted for speech and debate on actual issues, but it could not masquerade as actual issues that demanded attention.

Now, that has all changed. In addition to George W. Bush’s insistence that he is for children (has any candidate ever been against children?), he has made it a point to proclaim the “new” Republican Party as “the party of inclusion.”

The Republican Party has until recently been rather exclusionary when it comes to minorities. This is a weakness they are doing their best to hide. It is the reason they always tout themselves as “the party of Abraham Lincoln” and not “the party of David Duke”. Still, the fact remains that an overwhelming majority of minority voters side with the liberal Democrats. Perhaps if the Republicans hadn’t spent so much time giving tax cuts to the rich (most of whom seem to be white) they wouldn’t have this public relations dilemma.

Not to be outdone with brandishing the racial red herring, the Democrats caught a fish this big. They have nominated as their vice president, Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman. The Republicans, for all their gum flapping about racial inclusion, still managed to put another rich white guy on their ticket. “In your face, GOP!” say the Democrats.

But this move by the Democrats only spawned more useless distracting debate. For a week the Washington Post ran nothing but stories on the order of, “How an Orthodox Jew copes with the demands of congressional life,” “What blacks think about Lieberman,” “What Latinos think about Lieberman,” to “What Belgian Walloons think about Lieberman.” They might as well have run a spread called, “Jews’ News: Leapin’ Lizards, Them Folk is Everywhere!”

It became such an important controversy that the head of the Texas NAACP felt compelled to go on public radio and put his anti-Semitic foot in his mouth (after which he resigned due to pressure from his superiors). He claimed a Jew should not be in as important and sensitive a position as the vice presidency because all us untrustworthy Jews care about is money. Odd words considering Lieberman put himself in danger to help register black voters in the South during the ’60s. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the racial red herring is that by making it the primary (non)issue, the candidates open the dark doors to the kinds of debates genocides are based on.

Not only have the mainstream candidates tried to distract by politically masturbating about race, but the unelectable third party candidates have done it as well. Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party’s official-candidate-for-now and registered lunatic, has nominated a black woman as his running mate.

Is race an important issue in America? Of course, but Bush and Gore have failed to treat it as such. Neither offers solutions to the racial problems in this country, particularly the economic disparity between whites and non-whites. Instead, they have gone on a quest for the perfect poster boy for equality in America. Are they really trying to include other races? Yes, but only for their votes.

Other than saving Social Security, I haven’t heard Bush and Gore address many other key issues. Who has time to talk about capital punishment, the environment, health care, prisons overcrowded with recreational pot smokers, child abuse, police corruption, the economy, educating our dullard illiterate children, military policy, campaign finance reform, censorship, school shooting sprees, funding for the arts, abortion, potential Supreme Court nominees, AIDS and workers’ rights when there’s a Jew on the ticket?

The fact that we have thrown so much emphasis on race is symptomatic of a racial problem, but not the one that we usually think of. We will know that racism is no longer an issue when the mention of someone’s race fails to raise an eyebrow. People had plenty to say about President Kennedy’s Catholicism, the same way Lieberman is the focus of controversy now. How nice it will be when nobody cares anymore.

In the 2000 election, races have been treated the same as special interest groups: as voting blocs to be secured. Votes are traded for potential policy. The only difference between a race and a regular special interest group is a lack of funding and unity. If a candidate appears empathetic enough, the minorities go his/her way.

The choice of the word “race” itself carries major implications. The word “race” implies a winner, much like the campaign itself. We have our leading candidates, the white party, the black party, the Asian party, and everyone else in the Please Don’t Kill Us party. Of course, in reality no such parties actually exist. But by inserting race into a political campaign, we validate the most primal and paranoid fears we hold about a racial competition.

Up until Gore’s acceptance speech, few issues were dragged into the light. It was the first time he had really laid his ideas out, and almost none of the speech was devoted to race rhetoric. Granted, there was the standard garbage about the future being tomorrow and building bridges to somewhere, but at long last a candidate had the courage to avoid the easy target of race.

How nice it will be to live in a world where the mention of a candidate (or person) who is black, female, Jewish, Indian, Latino, or any other race is overwhelmingly met with the response, “So what?”

When polls of our suspicion are no longer relevant, bigoted assassins are no longer feared, and ancestry no longer dictates policy, then we shall at last have ceased to think like a melting pot and truly become one. I long for the day when we are blissfully ignorant of our differences, and courageously curious about our strengths. God, let us find our way to a time when trite paragraphs such as this are purged from the public eye as the unnecessary fluff they are. Happy campaigning!