WHAT WAS SAID, AND WHAT WAS NOT SAID

This week's political tempest in a teapot concerned Nevada's senior U.S. Senator, Harry Reid — not a man likely to be remembered for his oratorical gifts, in the first place.

It seems Sen. Reid shows up in the new book “Game Change” (a gossip-filled account of the 2008 campaign by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin) describing candidate Barack Obama as having improved electoral chances due to the fact he's “light skinned,” with “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

Apparently Sen. Reid spoke on the record.

Pundits have been pretending to have a debate about whether the remarks mean Sen. Reid is a racist. I don't know the senator's heart, but that's absurd. Harry Reid is not a racist.

However, Frederic Bastiat once wrote a wonderful essay on economics called "What is Seen and What is Not Seen." In this case, what's surprising is that no one has commented on "what was not said."

A senior leader of the Democratic party commented Barack Obama was electable because of some superficial features that make him more acceptable to voters than some hypothetical inner-city black man who speaks in an impenetrable ghetto patois. OK, fine. The senator said this thing — which is demonstrably true — in a way that shows he has a tin ear for "politically correct" nuance. The phrasing makes us wince because it would have been so easy — it's so common, these days — to disguise these same thoughts with euphemisms about his "sounding like he's college educated," et cetera.

Now, I haven't read "Game Change" — only the excerpts commonly available. But isn't it interesting that no one has raised a ruckus about what's REALLY offensive and dangerous in such a statement, from a titular head of the Democratic party, the kind of "old-timer" who should indeed have some say in who his party nominates for the presidency?

Is that ALL Harry Reid said? After noting the superficial attributes that make Barack Obama electable, wouldn't it be nice if this old Washington hand had said, "But you know, I'd feel a lot more comfortable about the fate of the country if we could take this promising young man aside, and convince him to spend another eight years in the Senate -- if not working in the private sector, which would be even better -- offering him some hands-on tutorials on foreign policy and free-market economics, before we recommend him as our president," since "This poor fellow is going to be putty in the hands of the Pentagon and the counterfeiters over at the Federal Reserve, because at this point he's completely clueless"?

The Democratic Party gave us a presidential nominee whose qualifications for large portions of the job amount to an empty file folder. The nation now pays the price. Whose job was it to point out the emperor-nominee wore no clothes?