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Unfortunately, the perfect year was 1996 and the perfect candidate was Gen. Colin Powell.
As veterans say, I was there. My wife and I were among thousands of Americans who signed up for the Colin Powell for President campaign. We even got a grant and did some polling to measure white support for Powell in the Lehigh Valley, home of the original Reagan Democrats.
Then, suddenly, a year before the 1996 election, Powell pulled the plug, rumor said, to please his wife Alma, who dreaded the invasion of privacy and feared for her husband's safety.
It was a pity, because Colin Powell was not just the perfect candidate - he was the perfect black candidate.
While some say racial stereotyping is a thing of the past, social scientists like Stanford's Paul M. Sniderman and George Washington University's Carol Sigelman find that white (and black) voters often hold negative stereotypes of African-Americans as relatively violent, lazy and boastful, a matter that's been alluded to by Sen. Barack Obama. Whites see black politicians, in particular, as too liberal and none too competent.
And, given the recent history of black political leaders like Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick, Washington, D.C.'s, Marion Barry and Newark, N.J.'s Sharpe James, one might well add illegality to the mix.
All of that explains why Powell was the perfect black candidate. As the hard-working son of Jamaican immigrants, a Republican, a general and a hero of Desert Storm, Powell was immune from charges of laziness, liberalism, incompetence and corruption. He was the perfect black candidate since he played against type. No one considers Republicans too liberal, or generals shiftless.
Yet even Powell was not above race. We found that in the Lehigh Valley, white voters who viewed politics as a game with winners and losers were less pro-Powell, perhaps seeing a black win as an inevitable white loss. Those opposed to free trade and open immigration, in particular, were against Powell (and probably now back Hillary Clinton).
Still, Powell was amazingly popular, locally and nationally. A year before the '96 race, the general had a 74 percent approval rating nationally, and a 10-point lead over President Clinton. I think he would have beaten Clinton.
In sharp contrast, Obama, for all his rhetorical gifts, is anything but the perfect black candidate. He not only appears to be too liberal to be president, he actually is too liberal. Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, a background as a community organizer, past drug use, an anti-American pastor and a wife who probably meant it when she said she had never before felt proud of her country.
Indeed, Michelle Obama's comments are a dream come true for political opponents. For weeks, country stations in central Pennsylvania have been bombarded with requests for Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" (key line: "I'm proud to be an American!") dedicated to Michelle Obama. The only thing that could make Obama seem more liberal would be a Hollywood career.
As for competence, Obama is certainly smart enough to be president, but is only four years out of the Illinois state legislature and has essentially never run anything but this campaign.
And then there's corruption. Obama represents Chicago, the New Orleans of the Midwest.
It's not his fault, but any Chicago pol has friends and cronies in jail. It comes with the territory. This is sure to be exploited in endless ads poking holes in the senator's holier-than-thou persona.
Does all that mean Obama can't win the White House? Not at all. After all, he doesn't have to be the perfect candidate to be the strongest candidate. Against Clinton's unpopular personality and John McCain's unpopular war, Obama has a good shot at winning, particularly if he can find it in his heart to embrace a few conservative stands to dispel fears that he is just too liberal.
With the right strategy and tactics, this could be the right year after all. *
Robert Maranto is an associate professor of political science at Villanova, and is the author of "The Second Term of George W. Bush" (Palgrave 2006).
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