Kathryn — I half disagree. I’m ambivalent about whether Obama is a pioneer or not. I guess it depends on what you mean by pioneer. I can talk it either way. I do think it’s a good and satisfying thing that an African-American got the nomination of one of our two major parties. And we don’t need to run through all of the cliches we will now be drenched with — about, for example, what a black man couldn’t do when Obama was born and what a black man has done today — to understand that it’s a big milestone. I’m happy for America and Obama.

That said. I agree we shouldn’t all go weak in the knees about it. I’m already sick of the “you just don’t get it” e-mails from liberal readers and from various conversations I’ve had on college campuses. No, I do get it. Really, I do. I just don’t think the news that the Democratic nominee is black justifies a complete suspension of our critical faculties. Obama’s skin color is indeed “revolutionary” — discounting how cheap that word now is these days — but his ideas are for the most part hackneyed and calcified (and sometimes even a little scary). One can see quite clearly already that Obama’s supporters will claim that opposition to his program or skepticism toward his abilities is a sign of a cold and unfeeling heart. We are in for a very long summer where the press and other members of the Obama cheering section will insist that lack of enthusiasm for Obama is a symptom of a malformed conscience and a pinched soul.

Conservatives, it seems to me, need to respond to this with some grace, dignity, and empathy but also with some intellectual discipline. His race and his ideas are apples and oranges. It’s nice to have an apple on the table, to be sure, but the oranges are dry and stale. And no matter how many times you say how great it is to have the apple, no matter how often you bleat “you just don’t get” how wonderful apples are, it won’t make the oranges any fresher.