Many have lamented the long arduous campaign that will eventually lead to a temporary residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the one who survives. It is a marathon, a grueling test of endurance, strength and resilience, a brutal and relentless assault on the psyche, and a journey through dark and dangerous terrain. 

It is in short an excellent test of character for any man or woman who would be leader of a faltering superpower nation. 

Maybe there was a time when the press was sufficiently independent and vigilant to test a candidate in a more limited campaign – or maybe that is mere myth as well. Maybe a long campaign in 2000 would have been adequate to expose the outright fraud of George W. Bush before he assumed the reigns of power and led the nation over a cliff.

There is a paradoxical truism from the late sixties that has lost none of its value today: If you don’t think you’re a racist, you are one.

Once upon a time in America, from Rhode Island to the California coast, not so very long ago, it was possible to grow up in a pearl white neighborhood with pearl white schools, never having seen a person of color in the flesh.

Once upon a time in America, not long ago at all, a woman’s place was in the home and her place in the home was the kitchen.

Once upon a time in America, not far beyond yesterday, the United States Senate was an all-white male club and members of congress were invariably congressmen.

My mother is getting on in life. She supports Hillary Clinton for president. Her reasoning is simple: The analysts tell her there is little difference in substance between Clinton and Obama and she wants to witness a woman being sworn in as chief executive in her lifetime. 

There is not a kinder, more compassionate or wiser person on the planet than my mother yet I cannot abide conventional wisdom. For when Barack Obama speaks, he speaks to that part of my heart and soul that still believes in an all but forgotten dream. 

It started as just a ripple in the land of Lincoln, tapped a current in rural Iowa, picked up steam in South Carolina and became a wave that swept across the nation and very nearly broke through to the California coast.

The smart money said it would all be over by Super Tuesday but the rail of a man with dark skin, a funny name, a golden voice and ambition as compelling as the dream he inspires, is still standing.

After Florida and the most uninspired State of the Union Address in memory, as millions of Americans lose their homes and millions more face the hardships of a struggling economy, as a trillion dollar war becomes a two trillion dollar occupation and the effects of global climate change are felt from the punishing storms of California to the dwindling polar icecaps, the deck of presidential contenders has been reshuffled and the emerging choices are at once bleak and enchanting. 

Barring an unforeseen and unprecedented third party campaign, our next president will be selected from among the four surviving candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

The presidential dreams of Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani are dead and buried. The dream of John Edwards is once again deferred.

Huckabee has demonstrated that the power of the evangelical movement is not yet sufficient to win the White House. It is rather confined to a spoiler roll, an ally of the Republican Party without an alternative. Rudy Giuliani has proven that the nation has finally moved on from September 11, 2001, his only real claim to presidential ambition.

“All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners.” - Steven E. Landsburg, Professor of Economics, NY Times 1/16/08.

The problem with universal knowledge is that it is often wrong. The problem with what “all economists know” is that it is always right until it is wrong and, then, it is often disastrously wrong. 

Proponents of trade policies that masquerade under the name of Free Trade have a marked tendency to frame the debate in terms that disqualify conflicting points of view.

Harkin back to the birth of the labor movement: The union busters, the Pinkerton thugs, the railroad strikes, the Haymarket massacre, the endless coal mining disasters, the age of child labor, indentured servitude, sweat shops, deregulation and laissez faire economics.

All the economists were in agreement: Labor was irrelevant to the national economy. Minimum wage, labor standards, a forty-hour workweek and the right to organize a working force were all considered unnatural interferences in the free flow of a working economy.

Something is missing in the debate on illegal immigration. We listen to Lou Dobbs, the self-proclaimed champion of political independence, blaming twelve million unauthorized migrants for the problems of the American middle class. We listen to a Republican presidential candidate plead for just a little compassion – not for the immigrants but for their progeny – and watch him get hammered by the hardcore right. 

Everyone condemns employers for employing immigrants over native Americans – or rather, legal immigrants – but no one is really demanding the kind of enforcement that would end the practice. Corporations are the sponsors of political candidates and, in any case, it would only hurt the small businesses that candidates promote as the heart of our economy.

Even the defenders of immigration fall back on their heels against the assault, protesting that most immigrants are not of the criminal element, that not all abuse the system and that most contribute to the economy on balance.

What is missing from the discussion is basic common sense – not the brand of common sense that demands an impenetrable wall across the southern border but the kind that breaks it down to human terms.