Negative Spin Hasn't Spoiled Obama's Yarn

The scribe shared his newfound insights with a wise man who thought deep thoughts in an Ivory Tower.

"I'd say a lot of white people are tired of living passively in a dirty, corrupt and racist regime, and they feel that a vote for Obama would be like taking a bath," said Roger Wilkins, a professor of American history and culture at George Mason University.

Not so long ago, in the scribe's far-out home state of Louisiana, David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, ran for Congress in a special election. It was 1999, and he took one of every five votes in that south Louisiana district, finishing a close third in a crowded field. He narrowly missed the runoff.

Then, just this month, Barack swept the state's Democratic presidential primary, with roughly three in 10 white men voting for him. Less than a decade separated those two elections. It seems miraculous.

But the scribe remained skeptical. For if white people had changed, as Barack's popularity seemed to indicate, then Bill's effort to cast him as an illusion was a reminder that -- Presto! -- perhaps they could also change back.

Even Hillary had taken to casting mocking spells.

"Now, I could stand up here and say: 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified,' " she told supporters in Rhode Island. "The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

Despite the ridicule, Barack continued to levitate in the polls, as if that photograph of him had conjured the genie in Aladdin's lamp. And Hillary seemed to have pricked her finger on her campaign's spinning wheel.

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com