Michelle Obama has every reason to be proud.

Our next first lady took plenty of heat in February when she addressed a campaign rally for her husband about him being the first person of color who was accepted as a serious candidate for the presidency.

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country,” she said.

Pro-Republican pundits went to great lengths to ridicule Obama, suggesting that she was ashamed to be American. Unfortunately, neither she nor her husband Barack, already known for his eloquence, was able to find any clearer way to express her feelings.

Of course, she didn’t have to. Everybody knew exactly what she meant, and everybody knew the truth behind it.

The Limbaughs and O’Reillys can bray until they’re blue in the face, but all minorities knew the sad truth. All our lives we’d been told — by public figures, by teachers and counselors, even by our own parents — that we could grow up to be anything we wanted, even president of the United States. Those words sounded great in theory. But as long as every president, and every person nominated by a major party, was a white guy, those words rang hollow.

My college macroeconomics professor gave us a list of laws to clarify the difference between theory and fact, to separate belief from reality. At the time they seemed like such no-brainers that no one really thought much about them. “If you see something, then it exists,” one law stated. “If it happened, then it must be possible,” was another. “Until it happens, it hasn’t happened,” was another.

We were told we could be president, but nobody like us had ever made it. The promise hadn’t been proven, and even those who believed didn’t really know if it was possible.

It’s human nature to emulate those who are most like us. I’m old enough to remember the sensation Mexican race walker José Pedraza made at the 1968 Olympics when he won the silver medal in front of his home crowd; it was the host country’s only medal. Afterward people could be seen waddling all over Mexico, inspired by Pedraza’s feat.

That inspiration paid dividends — Mexico’s Daniel Bautista won the gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and Bernardo Segura finished first at the 2000 Games in Sidney, but was disqualified for not maintaining the strict form required in the event.

As a fat kid growing up in the 1960s, I made heroes of Washington quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, Detroit pitcher Mickey Lolich and other portly players. If they could do it, there was hope for me. Without their example I might never have been motivated to play those sports in school.

Many Americans could find no such heroes in the historically homogenous political world, however. To aspire to be president was to test an unproven theory.

It was time for a barrier to be broken, and many assumed that it would be the gender barrier. Hillary Clinton even declared that her ascension to the White House was “inevitable.”

Her declaration seemed logical just a few months ago. Clinton was taking the next step on a path that Frances Farenthold, Geraldine Ferraro and Elizabeth Dole had begun.

Farenthold, a Texas legislator known as Sissy in her home state, was the first woman formally considered for a major party ticket, when she placed second in the vote to be George McGovern’s running mate at the 1972 Democratic Convention. When the top pick, Thomas Eagleton, was removed due to publicity over his past psychiatric treatment, McGovern bypassed Farenthold and chose a member of the Kennedy clan, R. Sergeant Shriver.

Ferraro made the Democratic Party ticket as Michael Dukakis’ vice presidential nominee in 1988, and Dole, a Republican, was the first seriously considered female presidential candidate. Dole was second in national polls in 2000, behind eventual president George W. Bush, and third in the Iowa straw poll behind Bush and Libertarian candidate Steve Forbes when she ended her campaign just before the primaries.

No African American had made it even to the first step. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had launched campaigns, but their activist backgrounds had made both polarizing figures and thus long shots for major party nomination. Black Americans had no leader with a viable chance for the White House until Obama exploded into America’s consciousness with his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

The rest, as they say, is history — history in a very real way. Now that it’s happened, we know it’s possible: for Americans of color, the promise that our children can grow up to be president is no longer a theory, but a fact. We need no longer believe; for now we know.

That’s something of which we can all be proud.

Carlos A. Rodriguez is opinion editor of The Brownsville Herald. Contact him at (956) 982-6681 or by e-mail at crodriguez@brownsvilleherald.com.

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Yes, it’s true: Barack Obama’s middle name is the same as the first name of the Iraqi dictator we deposed in 2003. And, for that matter, it’s the same name as the internationally respected king of Jordan who devoted virtually his entire adult life toward establishing peace in the Middle East.

It’s also true that Obama’s Republican opponent has the same first name as the guy who shot Ronald Reagan — and Abraham Lincoln, for that matter.

Does that coincidence of names mean people shouldn’t vote for John McCain? Of course not, but it’s the same logic some people are using to suggest there’s something sinister about Obama.

That’s one of the problems we’ve gotten from the two major presidential candidates (Libertarian Bob Barr is also on the ballot, and seven others are seeking write-in votes in the Texas election): much of the information we’re getting about each candidate is coming from the opposition. McCain is telling us that Obama is a socialist, while Obama wants us to believe McCain is the second coming of George Bush.

Isn’t it better to just get each person’s plans from his own campaign?

Perhaps. Of course, with opinions of Bush running so low, every candidate is promising change, while trying to label the other guy as a mere puppet of his party.

As is the truth with most political stuff, the truth is somewhere in between. Every party is dominated by extremists. If you think about it, that’s to be expected, since those who devote their whole lives to the cause tend to be demagogues. So the party elite tend to be heavily right-wing on the Republican side and wildly liberal on the Democratic side. Opponents, then, can’t resist the urge to paint candidates in the extremist colors that fly early in the campaign season.

Fortunately, voters usually weed out the hard-core disciples during the primaries, leaving general moderates on the general election ballots. That’s why recent elections have been so close. It’s also why even though the parties seem to be so far apart ideologically, in practice they’re hardly indistinguishable.

The question, then, becomes just how independent each candidate really will be if elected, or how much he will feel bound to pursue the goals and ideals of the party he agreed to represent. After all, the party invests heavily in its candidate, and expects support in return.

The final candidates, then, are a compromise, as evidence by the grumblings we’ve heard from each party’s core about their respective nominee. Republican wonks wanted Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee; hard-core Democrats rallied behind Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Many Libertarians are concerned that their nominee, as a Republican congressman, didn’t share many of his new party’s views regarding social liberties.

Even compromise, however, is a matter of degree.

It’s a pushmi-pullyu kind of thing. Officials, once elected, are beholden to the party for its support, while the party must accede to the personal charisma and individual positions that got the person elected. A strong candidate, like Bill Clinton, can drive his party toward the kinds of policies the people support, while a weak person like either George Bush can become merely a front for the party machine. In that respect, the ultimate presidency will also be a constant exercise in compromise, placing charisma and diplomatic skill at a premium.

Which will we get from whomever wins today’s election — a strong, independent president who can push his own programs through Congress, or someone who is left to either take or leave what the lawmakers put before him?

It’s hard to know. Obama’s charisma can’t be denied, and he gained his chops getting social programs supported at the local level in Chicago. But the first-term Senator is still a relative newcomer who might not have had the time to build the kind of network that can install him squarely as the leader of his party. McCain has served more than a quarter century in Congress, and was a military liaison to the Senate before that; he certainly has the contacts, and the record. It’s certainly true that he’s stood up to his own party on many key issues. That’s both good and bad; it shows that he doesn’t march in lockstep with his party, but it also shows that on many issues he couldn’t bring the party to support his positions.

So we’ll get our maverick, all right, no matter who gets elected. What remains to be seen is whether or not that maverick will always stand apart from the herd, or get it to follow.

Carlos A. Rodriguez is opinion editor for Valley Freedom Newspapers. Contact him at (956) 982-6681 or by e-mail at crodriguez@brownsvilleherald.com.