Michael Steele's Challenge

Michael Steele's elevation to chairmanship of the Republican National Committee is being hailed as watershed moment in the history of the American Republic, similar to Barack Obama being elected president. Unfortunately, try as I might, I simply cannot erase from memory the GOP trotting out black faces at recent party conventions in an effort to portray itself as the party of inclusiveness, despite 40 years of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps I have fallen prey to cynicism but Steele's efforts to recast this lilly white party is an exercise in futility.

Thoreau's Advice for RNC

Before investing the exorbitant sum of $150,000 to outfit and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the Republican National Committee would have been well-advised to heed the admonition of Henry Thoreau in Walden:

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping a new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.