Weigel

In February 2008, National Review 's Ramesh Ponnuru raised a very smart and pessimistic question that few people have explicitly touched on since then.

I am very skeptical of the idea that Obama's candidacy will promote racial healing. What if our first African-American nominee loses the general election? Would that help American race relations?

Obama won, but Ponnuru was right: Had Obama lost, it would have instilled incredible pessimism among black voters and some amount of white liberals. ( The Onion developed a cover package in 2008, in the case of a McCain victory, bitterly saluting "our first 44th white president" and calling America "not yet shitty enough for social change.")

Instead, Obama became president. The question changed: What if our first African-American president becomes unpopular and presides over failed policies? And I think you can see the results . When Obama angers moderates and conservatives, it doesn't just inspire anger at liberals. It inspires anger at the "other" that they think he represents. As I argued on Tuesday , I think that's one reason that the "ground zero mosque" debate has become so poisonous. Some Americans voted for Obama because they expected the election of a black president with a Muslim father would, somewhat magically, simmer down race relations and the anger some Muslims feel towards the United States. But that requires/required Obama being a successful president. Had Obama presided over booming employment, there wouldn't be an appetite for all of these conspiracy theories about him.

Now, I'm not absolving Obama's opponents of blame for the fact that there's less "racial healing" and more discomfort with Islam than you would have expected there to be by summer 2010. Some of them have absolutely stoked the fires with wild-eyed charges of Obama doing the bidding of the New Black Panthers, being an anti-Semite, trying to bring about sharia law (how's Harold Koh doing on that front?), etc and etc. But if Obama was having more success on the economy, I don't think they'd be having so much luck. Just look at the example of ACORN. Would there have been so much interest in a take-down of ACORN if the housing market wasn't so sluggish? Because at some point in 2009 ACORN morphed from a group that was accused of voter registration fraud to a group that was accused of "shaking down" government and businesses to give mortgages and loans to poor blacks. It was the search for an economic scapegoat that turned ACORN into a public enemy.

Put another way: If there's an economic turnaround by 2012, I think the number of people who think Obama is a Christian will spike without him so much as stepping inside a church.