Your feel for it is needed because the Obama speech on racism was way, way short on target. “It accomplished nothing,” according to Victor Davis Hanson in Wednesday's CBS News Online.

Hanson called it a “morality tale of John Edwards' two Americas – the political obtuseness of the intellectual elite juxtaposed to the common sense of the working classes.”

”Obtuseness,” “intellectual elite” “juxtaposed to” and “working classes” means, if you're not elite enough, “know-it-alls in a bubble compared to the savvy of down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth people.”

And the more the talking heads praised Obama's speaking courage (campaign chutzpah) the more the polls showed the ballooning distrust of regular people for his words. It showed a growing suspicion that his eloquence (political spin) was a speech to “excuse the inexcusable,” (as in alibi for mugging.)

Please, Sen. Clinton, explain what you and Bill Clinton were thinking when you both supported equal rights for minorities, when you visited black churches and meeting places and backed meaningful legislation for equal treatment away back when.

Tell us how you know that racism holds back the maximum potential of our country. Tell us, all of us, what we have to do to make racism a tactic that always fails. Before it's too late, tell us the truth that racism always bites the hand that feeds it.

We need more than a must-do, campaign speech that attempts to explain someone else's passion against America. Everyone must realize that using race as a means to an end is self destructive.

And above all, wrong.

This country obviously has some healing to do And your are just the person to do it.

Yours truly,

A common citizen