Aspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.

If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.

One of the unwritten rules in a presidential news conference is that he'll answer questions. If he chooses not to, there's not much you can do about it other than make yourself look like an idiot screaming, which to me is counterproductive.

I'm not quite certain how you can force a candidate to stick by the rules.

One of the things that Africa needs, everybody seems to agree, is some measure of debt relief.

All of our panelists are deeply engaged in the topics at hand, so that leaves me free to convene a little dinner party, sans alcohol, and invite the rest of America to listen in.

I certainly don't think Donald Trump suggesting violence in any way.