...or do you find yourself asking "What would Barry Goldwater do?"

Colin Powell has endorsed Barak Obama for President and America is shocked, shocked to learn that both men are people of color. There can only be one explanation: Powell has abandoned his Republican principles, eschewed his conservative history and tarnished his four stars; all in the name of blackness. To paraphrase Thomas More " It profits a man nothing to give his soul, even for the whole world...but for a liberal?"

Predictably, the Republicans are outraged (Republicans are easily outraged) and, the intimation is that Powell made his decision exclusively and entirely along racial lines. Why not? After all, they all know each other don't they? First Colin Powell then Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and finally O.J. Simpson. Jesus! For a country that professes to be "the best", we sweat more fear than an Alfred Hitchcock audience.

I have a thought. (Hold the applause, please.) If Colin Powell has chosen Obama for low motives, what about Joe Lieberman? Here's a man who abandoned his party and its policies in order to support John McCain. What lesson are we to take from that? Apparently Lieberman has elected to endorse McCain because they are both old, white-haired white guys. After all, look at them together. They look like a pair of little salt shakers. If it wasn't for McCain's male-patterned baldness, Cindy would have a tough time remembering which of them gets the nitroglycerin pill.

Still, you have to feel sorry for the Republicans. First they were done in by the Catholics in 1960 who went to the polls in record numbers (in Chicago those numbers exceeded the above-ground population) in support of Jack Kennedy. Since that time any effort to court constituencies other than rich white people have fallen on stony ground. Republicans have never understood why their race-baiting, minority bashing, let's keep the poor poor, I've got mine so screw you style of politics hasn't resonated with the black community. The only black people invited to the Republican National Convention were asked to bring their own brooms.

It is difficult to dissect the thought process that drove Colin Powell to endorse Barak Obama, however it is difficult to imagine that race wasn't at least a component. Powell can be forgiven for a lack of purity in his choice. He didn't create "us vs. them". That was white people. For a hundred and fifty years since the Civil War, black people have tried to get a seat at the table. Colin Powell was Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs yet on Meet the Press last Sunday, many Americans only saw a black man siding with one of his own. Sometimes this country can be a very disappointing place.