Want to be president? Then for the presidency's sake, don't, for the love of the nomination, comment on race. Another piece of advice: don't, for the sake of the presidency, make comments that can be misconstrued as disparaging about media sweetheart Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Having not heard my sage advice, presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., waded into the touchy topic of race days before he announced his bid for the Democratic nomination and declared that Sen. Obama is the "first sort of mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright, and clean and a nice-looking guy."

And I couldn't agree more, at least with the idea behind Sen. Biden's remarks. Other than the nice-looking part, I can't consider myself an appropriate judge of the senator's looks.

Leave it to Sen. Biden to stick his foot squarely in his mouth on issues pertaining to the African-American community. This is the same Sen. Biden that, according to USA Today, in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Southern voters, declared to a roomful of South Carolina's Columbia Rotary Club in December that Sen. Biden's state of Delaware was a "slave state that fought beside the North." But only, of course, the senator stressed, because Delaware "couldn't figure out how to get to the South; there were a couple of states in the way."

If that kind of rhetoric doesn't secure you the black vote, I don't know what will.

But before you start conjuring up images of Sen. Biden running off to a KKK campaign fundraising meeting waving a Confederate flag while refusing to admit that jazz is a better expression of the black experience than hip-hop, consider what Sen. Biden is actually saying. Sen. Biden was describing his fellow Democratic hopefuls and structured his comments within the context of discussing presidential hopefuls, not the black community as a whole.

Sen. Biden, in my opinion, correctly opined that Sen. Obama is the first electable black presidential hopeful — ever. No offense to former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., the most forgetful of the 2004 Democratic presidential hopefuls, but Sen. Obama's actually got a chance at this. There's only one other black man or woman who could say their hopefulness was actually hopeful: former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell, however, was never a mainstream candidate because he was never a candidate. So Sen. Biden's got a point, whether you are comfortable with how he worded it or not.

I'll agree with what I believe Sen. Biden was trying to say. No black presidential candidate has been as mainstream or as electable as Sen. Barack Obama. And Sen. Biden thinks he's articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking to boot.

Whether or not you think Sen. Biden's comments are reflective of racist tendencies rooted deep in his East Coast liberal heart, his observation must be on the mind of many of the electorate. The craze surrounding the rather inexperienced Sen. Obama begs the question: Is much of his popularity due to the fact that he is black? Sen. Biden seems to think so.

Another minority presidential hopeful, Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., who is as much Latino as Sen. Obama is black, has not drawn nearly the same amount of attention as the latter. And Gov. Richardson is far more deserving. As a former U.N. ambassador, congressman, and energy secretary, and currently governor of New Mexico, Gov. Richardson has a powerful résumé and applicable experience. Sen. Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review.

Sound energy policy or well-written articles? Hmm…

Sen. Obama's apologists will equate his candidacy with another inexperienced U.S. presidential hopeful, Abraham Lincoln, as if President Lincoln's near dictatorial — though timely performance — in office somehow justifies Sen. Obama's inexperience. The difference, however, is that President Abraham Lincoln was the commander-in-chief of a nation with 14 fewer states and a GDP that was a fraction of what California's is today. Add to that America's current position as a waning superpower, and the fact that more people harbor us ill will now than ever before in our nation's history, and you're looking at an executive branch where Lincolnian inexperience just doesn't cut it anymore.

So why are you so excited about Sen. Obama?

America has been anxious for a member of its historically underdog ethnic group to make a realistic run for the presidency for the last decade and a half. Voters, for the most part, are just plain excited about the idea of a black president, more so, it seems, than even a woman president. Powell wasn't willing, but Sen. Obama is, and he has inherited all of the excitement that voters hold for a mainstream black presidential hopeful. And he's the very first. It's just too exciting.

So what if Sen. Biden was right? What if all of this excitement and this "storybook" situation is due to Sen. Obama's ethnicity?

What I'm trying to say is, would you be so excited about Sen. Barack Obama if he were white?

Gerald Cox ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics and Middle Eastern studies.