Brazile…will not let the "white boys" win. And that’s not a description of "gender or race, it’s an attitude. A white-boy attitude is `I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind,’ " Brazile says. "They don’t see or think about it. It’s a culture." It is the sense of utter entitlement. And that she will not have. That is how Washington Post reporter Robin Givhan quoted Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager, deep in a glowing Nov. 16 profile. Imagine the same statement–but with "white boys" changed to "black girls"–being made by George W. Bush’s campaign manager. It would have touched off a national sensation. Legions of Democrats would have demanded–and promptly received–apologies, but these would not have stilled the clamor. The campaign manager would have been banished from public life, perhaps forever. And Bush’s candidacy would have been severely damaged, with dozens of follow-up stories probing every corner of the Bush camp for other signs of infection by racism. So how did Donna Brazile’s little slur play? Well, the authors of two letters to the editor of The Post found it offensive. So did The New Republic, in a brief item (republished in The Washington Times): "Since when, we wonder, is the phrase `white-boy attitude’ not about gender or race?" So did The Providence Journal-Bulletin. And that’s about it: As of Dec. 1, I can find no other mention, in any publication, of Brazile’s comment. One reason for this, of course, is that "white boys" and other slurs directed at white males are habitually shrugged off, based on a double standard that is understandable in light of our history of racial oppression, but far too forgiving if we want a future of racial tolerance. This same double standard also helps explain why there is so little criticism of the many far more inflammatory comments made by leading liberal Democrats. Their efforts to smear and stereotype their adversaries as racists have become so routine as to seem unremarkable, and so common as to suggest a strategy of spreading fear and loathing among black voters. And Brazile’s boss, Al Gore, has been a leader of the race-baiting pack. This comes against a background of long-standing Democratic charges–echoed by many media reporters and commentators–that Republicans use "code words" and "wedge issues" to exploit racial fears and divisions. The leading examples are the attacks on then-Vice President George Bush’s 1988 campaign for linking then-Gov. Michael Dukakis to a Massachusetts prison-furlough program that enabled a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, to escape to Maryland, where he raped a woman twice after torturing and tying up her fiance. Ever since, Democrats and editorial writers have accused the Bush camp of fanning white fears of black crime. These criticisms are overblown: The furlough issue was first used against Dukakis not by the Republicans but by then-Sen. Al Gore during the Democratic primaries. Gore did not draw attention to Horton’s race, but neither did Bush. Nor did the Bush campaign’s advertisements. However, other Republicans supporting Bush did buy ads featuring a scary-looking photo of Horton. Together with comments by Republicans including Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, this strategy subtly reinforced the kind of racial stereotype that should be avoided. The Bush campaign can fairly be faulted for this. But then-Dukakis aide Donna Brazile’s unsubtle claim in 1988 that the Republicans "have used powerful racist lies to polarize the electorate" would more aptly describe the overtly racial rhetoric currently in vogue among leading Democrats. A few examples: l Naomi Wolf, a paid Gore adviser and feminist author, claimed on ABC’s This Week on Nov. 7 that "George [W.] Bush’s advisers" have "racist" views. Her evidence? She had seen a liberal talk-show host mischaracterizing the views of New York policy intellectual Myron Magnet, an informal, unpaid "adviser" who last sat down with Bush two years ago. Magnet has written that some in the "underclass" are unwilling to take jobs–a debatable view, but hardly "racist." Senate Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota said in October: "The array of anti-minority sentiment expressed almost each week now by Republicans is historic." He stressed Republican opposition to two black nominees: the ethically challenged former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun to become ambassador to New Zealand, and the admirable Ronnie L. White to become a federal judge. The Moseley-Braun nomination was a disgrace and should have been (but was not) rejected; the White nomination was a good one, and the Republicans deserved harsh criticism for killing it. But the Republicans did not deserve to be tarred as "anti-minority." Nor to have Sen.

Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., raising the specter of "a color test on nominations." l President Clinton, speaking in July 1997 to the National Association of Black Journalists, slyly smeared advocates of a 1996 California ballot initiative banning the state from using racial preferences: "I don’t know why the people who promoted this in California think it’s a good thing to have a segregated set of professional schools." l During a Missouri Senate race in 1998, Democrats ran commercials like this one on black radio stations: "When you don’t vote, you let another church explode. When you don’t vote, you allow another cross to burn." Translation: The Republicans are in the KKK closet. But some of the most divisive racial rhetoric has come from Al Gore. Again and again over the past two years, he has likened critics of affirmative action to hunters in a "duck blind." It went like this in his July 16, 1998, speech to the NAACP convention in Atlanta: "I’ve heard the critics of affirmative action. I’ve heard those who say we have a color-blind society. They use their color-blind the way duck hunters use a duck blind–they hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t notice." Gore is quite clearly suggesting that advocates of a color-blind Constitution are closet racists. But that’s not all. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby’s analysis is perceptive, if a bit hyperbolic: "Hunters use a duck blind to kill ducks. What can Gore be saying? That affirmative action’s critics want to kill–blacks? Does he really mean to imply something so foul? It is precisely what he means to imply.

…One paragraph after denouncing those ‘who now call for the end of policies to promote racial equality’–his euphemism for racial preferences–Gore demands to know their reaction to `that heinous crime’ in Jasper, Texas. And to a 1997 crime in Virginia, where a black man `was doused with gasoline, burned alive, and decapitated by two white men.’ " Such graphic descriptions of hate crimes fan fears of interracial violence (by "white men") more directly than any prominent Republican did in (or since) 1988. Yet precious few critiques of Gore’s racially inflammatory rhetoric have appeared in the nation’s newspapers, many of which have published multiple blasts at the 1988 Bush campaign’s use of Willie Horton. Why so much castigation of Republican Willie-Hortonizing and so little of Gore’s duck-blinding? What is it that provokes journalistic outrage? Is it the use of inflammatory racial rhetoric? Is it the hypocrisy of a politician who can segue from such stuff to chanting (as Gore has chanted): "We say unify, they say vilify"? Or is it something else? Something like an unspoken view that those who challenge liberal wisdom on racially sensitive issues are presumptively racist–and those who are politically correct have a license to engage in what Gore biographer Bob Zelnick called "arrogant demagoguery masquerading as principle"? It is telling that Gore and Bill Bradley–who expresses equally liberal views on racial issues far more temperately–have both found it expedient to court the support of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton’s greatest hits include sponsoring the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which innocent white men were fraudulently accused of raping a black teen-ager; denouncing Jewish "diamond merchants" during the 1991 Crown Heights turmoil; and railing in 1995 against a "white interloper" who leased a Harlem store that was besieged by antisemitic street protesters (joined by Sharpton) and later shot up and torched, causing eight deaths. Now this hate-mongering racial demagogue has become a potent force in Democratic politics. So we have both Democratic presidential candidates kissing Sharpton’s ring. Is this the vision of racial tolerance for which leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall fought? Is this the kind of leadership that fair-minded Democrats really want?