Steele gives Republicans a facelift

Steele would send a message.

He would say to all of America that the Republican Party does not wish to look like a jar of mayonnaise.

Steele would be the first black to chair the Republican National Committee.

For that matter, he’d be one of the few black Republicans to hold any kind of high-profile national party position since – well, since Reconstruction.

For those who didn’t study their notes last night, Reconstruction was about 143 years ago.

You go 143 years the way the Republicans have, and you don’t change too many perceptions overnight.

There’s an old line about the difference between Republicans and Democrats: Republicans are self-consciously responsible; Democrats would rather hate themselves in the morning.

But here’s another distinction: For all their craziness, and all their modern bowing and scraping to special-interest groups, the Democrats look like something.

They look like the American mix with the first black president.

Which brings us back to Steele.

He offers the Republicans a face. It is the face of a black man, which is a face they have offered to America almost never.

During the past 80 years, you know how many black Republicans have served in the House and Senate?

Well, in the Senate, there was Edward Brooke and …

And, that’s it. Over the course of 80 years.

And Brooke left the Senate 29 years ago.

(Of course, the Democrats aren’t much better. They’ve had Carol Moseley Braun and Obama in the Senate – and that’s it for them.)

Then there’s the House.

During the past 80 years, the Republicans have had three members of the House.

Three – and none now.

The Democrats have had 90 black members of the House – including 41 right now.

What does all this mean, besides perhaps embarrassing Republicans a lot and Democrats only a little less?

It means the Republicans, especially in the modern context, have got to do something to stop looking like the board of directors of a restricted country club.

In the recent presidential skirmish, the Democrats cornered all but a sprinkling of black votes in all of America.

The results were almost as heavily Democratic among Hispanic voters.

In the new political math, the percentage of voters who call themselves Republicans has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years.

And, with the first black President-elect, Barack Obama, heading for the White House, there are some in the Republican Party saying: Let’s take a look at this Steele guy.

He’s only held one elected office – and, a pretty meaningless one, at that – but he’s smart, he’s poised.

And there’s something else appealing about him, which we all understand, called race.

Steele understands this, though he doesn’t talk a lot about it directly. It’s the same strategy Obama took on his route to the White House.

Why talk about race?

Everybody knows it’s there just by looking.

This is Steele’s political blessing – and his personal vexation.

He is a black person in a party where almost every other black person is nowhere to be seen.

It’s not just the Obama appeal, either.

It’s a history of one party opening its arms in welcome, and voting for racial inclusiveness, and the other one saying no.

This isn’t news to anyone, is it?

But, just as Obama asked to be judged by his positions and not by his color, Steele can make the same case.

He is a Republican in spite of his party’s modern history on race, and he’s a conservative despite that doctrine’s reluctance to change the nation’s most exclusionary laws and traditions on race.

In a time when political leaders ask us to look past race, Steele can have it both ways.

He is who he is, but he is also what he stands for. He is anti-abortion.

He wants tax cuts.

He’s against embryonic stem cell research.

He’s also a bright guy, a personable guy, and a guy who understands the damage done by generations of racial unfairness the way few high-profile Republicans do.

If he gets the chairmanship, it’s the party’s way of signaling the whole country: We’re not your grandpa’s Grand Old Party.