Near the end of my recent road trip, on the final stretch coming into the Bay Area, I happened upon a bit of Dennis Miller's radio show with Charles Krauthammer as the guest. Krauthammer was unabashed in acknowledging his support for McCain in the recent election (including the primary), but afterward he had some kind words to say about Obama. He also said — and it sounded genuine to me — that he did feel some pride in the country electing an African-American president. I was driving, so I wasn't able to record his exact words, but his last comment was something to the effect that the United States of America is the only nation in the world that could elect a member of a racial minority as its leader.

Well, that's just false. The clear and indisputable counterexample is Peru. However he may have abused his power after achieving it, Albert Fujimori became president of Peru by election. That was the election in which Reaganites were all rooting for Mario Vargas Llosa against incumbent Alan García, and Fujimori came out of nowhere on a small-party ticket and beat them both.

There are probably other examples, depending on how one defines the terms. Race is such a vague concept anyway. It's not clear what all Krauthammer would count as a "racial minority". Being half Hungarian in France evidently does not qualify. Is Semitic a "race"? Carlos Menem is an Arab, son of Syrian immigrants, and he was elected president Argentina.

It's not clear what sort of population percentage is required to count as a "minority" either. As baseball fans know, the Dominican Republic is such a melting pot it's hard to say what race any given Dominican belongs to. The people's skin colors range from dark brown to rosy pink with every mix in between. What color is the minority depends on how you count all the mixed-race folk, I suppose, but the current president, Leonel Fernández, now serving in his Grover-Clevelandish non-consecutive second term, looks like someone we'd consider light Black in the United States. His Benjamin-Harrisonish predecessor, Hipólito Mejía, looks like he could be chancellor of Germany. Both were elected by the Dominican people. Surely one of them is a member of the minority.

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