I have a book on heuristics…problem solving techniques…that, in explaining the need for such a book, gives a nice metaphor for racial positioning statements made by politicians and the like.

The problem with the way we're taught to solve problems is, the examples we're given to work on always come immediately after the necessary technique is demonstrated. To demonstrate the problem, the authors presented this triangle:

The problem is, prove the length of side AB plus the length of side BC is greater than the length of side AD plus the length of side DC, or

The truth of the proposition is obvious upon mere examination, yet if you can solve this problem…which came from an elementary school textbook, by the way…you will be in an elite group. Yet it is solvable by elementary school children when they know going in what techniques must be used.

Racial pronouncements are easy to make because you know what they have to sound like. Racial gestures are easy to make because you know what they have to look like. But solving racial problems in situ is a mutha.

At any rate, this set of gestures was symbolically sufficient. Much better than Bush's propensity for picture with pickaninnies.

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In Final Debate Before Caucuses, Democrats Tangle on Race Issues
By TODD S. PURDUM and ADAM NAGOURNEY

DES MOINES, Jan. 11 — The Democratic presidential contenders grappled on Sunday night with issues of race, taxes and national security in their final debate before next week's Iowa caucuses, getting in sharp jabs at one another on some of the most delicate questions in American politics.

Scrambling to sway undecided voters in the final days of the first presidential contest of 2004, eight of the nine candidates used a forum intended to address issues of special concern to blacks and Latinos to highlight their broad collective differences with Republicans. But under prodding from the two black candidates, they also squared off with one another.…In one of the sharper exchanges of the whole campaign season, the Rev. Al Sharpton confronted Dr. Dean with what Mr. Sharpton described as the lack of minority officials in senior positions in Dr. Dean's administration as governor.

"Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?" Mr. Sharpton demanded, after Dr. Dean had earlier suggested that hiring more minorities was a key to racial understanding in America.

"We had a senior member of my staff on my fifth floor," Dr. Dean responded elliptically, in an apparent reference to the executive offices in Vermont.

"No, your cabinet!" Mr. Sharpton said. Dr. Dean responded quietly: "No, we did not."

"Then you need to let me talk to you about race in this country," Mr. Sharpton said.

Dr. Dean responded, moments later, "I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to civil rights in America."

At another point, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina lectured Dr. Dean on Southern sensibilities. Dr. Dean had just apologized again for saying last fall that he wanted to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags" in their pickup trucks. He declared that the flag "is a painful symbol to African-Americans."

Mr. Edwards countered that the flag was offensive "to all Americans."

P6: Mr. Edwards just dismissed a lot of votes.

The debate revealed no major new differences among the candidates, and for the most part allowed them to use their last joint televised appearance to restate the themes most of them have been sounding in the state for more than a year. But the strains of relentless campaigning were evident in their hoarse voices, sagging faces and short tempers.

Carol Moseley Braun, unfailingly cool and cordial in past debates, seemed roused by the bickering over race. Ms. Braun pivoted off Mr. Sharpton's exchange with Dr. Dean to ask why Mr. Gephardt, as House Democratic leader, had not pressed harder to protect affirmative action programs. And she demanded to know how Mr. Edwards could vote regularly with President Bush in Congress, yet attack Dr. Dean so readily.

"You voted for the Patriot Act," she said. "You voted to deploy the missile defense system. And yet you stand up here and call Howard a hypocrite. This is not right."

Ms. Braun was just as blunt with Mr. Sharpton, with whom she has long had a tense relationship, suggesting that he was stirring racial divisions before a national television audience.

"It's time for us to talk about what are you going to do to bring people together because people cannot afford a racial screaming match," she said. "We have to come together. We have to come together as one nation to get past these problems."

Mr. Edwards disputed the details of Ms. Braun's charge, saying, "Well, Carol, that was a great speech, but what you just said is not right." And Mr. Sharpton defended his decision to assail Dr. Dean's record on civil rights, declaring: "I want him to be accountable, since he brought up race. That's not racial hysteria. That is accountability."

The combined black and Hispanic population of Iowa in the 2000 census was roughly 5 percent of the state's total populace, meaning that from the candidates' viewpoint, parts of this debate were aimed as much at voters in South Carolina, which votes on Feb. 3, as at caucus-goers here.