Since this is National Black History Month, let me take a crack at the flap over what Sen. Joe Biden meant when he referred to Sen. Barack Obama as the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.
For one thing, while everyone pounced on the word clean, I think Biden meant all the words to be taken as a package, i.e.. Obama possesses all these qualities.
I suspect he was thinking of Obama in comparison with the two best-known blacks who have run for president, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are okay on mainstream, articulate and bright but cant quite qualify for clean, when its denied by the dictionary as characterized by moral integrity.
Family man Jackson has a bastard daughter by a former staffer he got a little too familiar with and Sharpton has the Tawana Brawley incident forever in his resume. I admired his guts when he was told by Democrats who wanted him out of the presidential race in 2004, that he could expect that to be brought up and his reply was go ahead and Ill start with Chappaquiddick. They got the message and backed off. Biden, I suspect, had for the moment forgotten the other blacks who have run. But Carol Mosely Braun wouldnt fit the package either because of her choice of unsavory friends during her term of office.
Alan Keyes, who ran in 1996, fit most of it, including clean, but isnt a 10 in looks like Obama, who is Hollywood handsome. By the way, I have met Jesse Jackson in person when he visited Olympia once and he may not be as good looking as Barack either, but he oozes sex appeal. He was supposed to address the Senate one morning but stood up a breakfast gathering so miffed senators stood him up and most of their seats in the chamber were empty just before the expected speech.
Lt. Gov. John Cherberg had to send Senate staffers out into the halls and recruit visitors and anybody else whod come in and occupy Senate seats to produce an audience for Jackson who pretended not to notice that this motley crowd wasnt the real thing.
As for Shirley Chisholm, the first black to run for president, she fit the package but was too early for the phenomenon of a black presidential candidate. Her famous claim when she announced in 1972 was Ive got the balls to be president. She probably would have made a good one.
Im not an Obama supporter. Two years in the Senate doesnt qualify him to be president as far as Im concerned. Joe Lieberman is my favorite Democratic candidate.
I notice Gov. Bill Richardson is getting the favorite son treatment from a lot of the media as the first Hispanic candidate, but he lost me long ago during the Clinton impeachment.
According to the Weekly Standard, the grand jury called in Richardson, who had been accused, along with Clintons golfing buddy, Vernon Jordan, of putting the arm on various employers to give Monica a job.
Richardson denied it. But we have a list of telephone calls made to employers from your personal office phone, the jury said. Richardson insisted that they werent made by him, that his secretary had access to his phone and could have made them. Shes already told us she didnt, said the jury. Well, I didnt, he said.
So the jury called the secretary back and told her what her boss had said. She loyally fell on her sword. If he didnt make them, she said, I guess it had to be me.
President Richardson would need a sign on his desk that reads, The buck stops anywhere but here.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA, 98340.