Photo Credits: The Internet
“Ben Carson,” billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted last night, “would be a real black president.”
In 2008, following the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA, I floated the idea that black presidents in the American political system will come from Americanized Africans like a drum beat and become a commonplace fixture in presidential politics.
What makes black presidents attractive are the changing demographics in the country. If current population and immigration trends continue, the country by this time in the next decade, will look more brown than white. Given the fact that white Americans have a longer history of working with black Americans than Asian or Latino Americans, suggests that black presidential contenders could garner the support of financiers like Murdoch. Also, these minority groups, I have observed, are more inclined to trust a black president to improve their status in America than white politicians.
Few people gave much credence to this punditry in 2008 or on the rare occasions when I have broached this subject during the Obama presidency. On the surface, few could see any potential black presidential prospects in the Democratic Party; as Democrats immediately made a pivot away from civil rights politics towards women and Latino issues.
Attractive black Democrats like former Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick found themselves in the back of the pack, where blacks, including Senator Barack Obama before pushing himself to the top of the hill in 2008, always had been.
Other black politicians found themselves embroiled in ethical and criminal battles that removed them from the list of future leadership in the party. With respect to 2016 and beyond; the Democratic influence in American presidential politics, has titled the advantage of party leadership away from black men toward women and Latino Americans. Democratic Party politics make it virtually impossible for another black president to emerge from the Democratic ranks before middle of the twenty-first century.
However, Murdoch sensing that someone other than Donald Trump should be the next Republican contender for the presidency, has been tweeting favorable comments about Ben Carson and his wife Candy.
Photo Credits: NBC
“What about a real black president who can properly (emphasis added) address the racial divide? And much else,” Murdoch tweeted on October 7.
“Do you think Republicans will vote for a black person for president, given their obvious dislike for President Obama,” Tracy Larkin, a veteran broadcast journalist asked me, last weekend during an interview on presidential politics on the Tan Town Coffee Club, which is broadcast from studios in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Yes,” I replied, “you have to remember the left handed compliment Ronald Reagan gave black people with the nomination of Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. I’ll replace Marshall with another black person, but it will be my kind of black person, Reagan seems to have said in selecting Thomas”
Carson, for Republicans, is an excellent antidote to President Obama. What better way to relegate the Obama presidency to the scrap heap of American politics than to replace him with a black person who is 100 percent African American and speaks fluent Reaganomics and “Blacks want free stuff,” Jebism?
The same factors that make Carson candidacy unfavorable to African Americans and progressive voters (his inarticulate mein in answering questions) makes him extremely appealing to conservative white Americans like Murdoch and company, who are more comfortable with a black person following their lead than one like President Obama, who has ideas of his own.
When the smokes clears following the GOP nominating convention next summer, look for Carson to be standing on center stage in either the number one or number two position poised to become the next in a long line of future black presidents.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist, the author of Paper puzzle and Justice in the Round. He can be contacted at haroldmichaelharvey.com .