Put aside that Orenstein sees nothing to criticize in Obama denying his mother’s lineage to maximize votes on the basis of racial solidarity. Focus instead on “authenticity” -- code for embracing the politics of black grievance and resentment. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are “authentic.” Tiger Woods is not.

Are we really to believe that such authenticity is something a majority of Americans now desire in a national leader? According to Orenstein, we are. For whites, she says, electing the first black president is “certainly a more exciting, more romantic and more concrete prospect than the ‘first biracial president.’” Is it really?

At the start of this election season, Obama was a politician who happened to be black – not a black politician. The Wright affair has tarnished that image – or will, I think, over time, as its message sinks in even among those who get their news from the mainstream media that have assiduously soft-pedaled this controversy.

Is there a way out of the trap in which Obama finds himself? He could do what he claims to be doing: initiate a more serious discussion about race than we have had in the past. He might begin by acknowledging that what distinguishes America is not its racial, religious and ethnic tensions – those can be found just about everywhere -- but the strenuous efforts Americans have made to combat these pathologies.

Were Obama to do that, he would sacrifice a measure of “authenticity” and displease Wright, Farrakhan, Jackson, and Sharpton. A political Tiger Woods would do it anyway. Does Obama have that kind of class? Color me skeptical.