Looks like Barry Obama is first to raise the issue of race openly in the general election campaign –

Yesterday in Missouri, Obama predicted McCain and the GOP would use racially tinged attacks against him.

“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. ”You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” 

An Obama spokesman denied that the line about “dollar bills” was related to the Democrat’s race.

So, if the line Obama uttered about “dollar bills” wasn’t about race, what was it about? 

“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

This is disingenuous for his campaign to claim that isn’t what Obama was talking about without providing a feasible alternative explanation and this one just doesn’t hold water.

UPDATE:  Obama was much clearer in an earlier speech that he WAS referring to race:

They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

Let’s look at exactly who is and was on U.S. currency.  According to the Treasury Dept.:

United States currency notes now in production bear the following portraits: George Washington on the $1 bill, Thomas Jefferson on the $2 bill, Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill, Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill, and Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill.

There are also several denominations of currency notes that are no longer produced. These include the $500 bill with the portrait of William McKinley, the $1,000 bill with a portrait of Grover Cleveland, the $5,000 bill with a portrait of James Madison, the $10,000 bill with a portrait of Salmon P. Chase, and the $100,000 currency note bearing a portrait of Woodrow Wilson.

For the record (and for Barry so that he doesn’t get all confused again as he did when he claimed there were 57 states or that presidents could serve 10 years in office), the “other presidents” (did I miss an election and inauguration somehow?) who appear on current dollar bills are: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Jackson, and Grant.  None of them spent “decades in Washington” before becoming president.  Even among those who appear on bills no longer produced — McKinley, Cleveland, Madison and Wilson — none of them spent decades in Washington, either.  Just who does Barry think is on our currency and what does he think he knows about them?

Finally, on the issue of race, AP states in their article that Obama is “the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House.”  This is factually incorrect.  First, Obama is multi-racial with an African father and a white mother.  Second, even if one were to concede that he is black and not multi-racial, while he is the first such nominee of a major political party, he is hardly the first with a shot at winning.  Anything can happen in the course of a political campaign so if you’re in the race, you’ve got a shot.  Heck, way back in 1872 Frederick Douglass was nominated for Vice President on the Equal Rights Party ticket.  (Had AP said “a legitimate shot,” then they would have been more accurate, but that probably would have ticked off Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.)

Race has no business in this or any election — either being used against a minority candidate or by a minority candidate to garner sympathy.  Is Obama really trying to come off as a victim here?  I don’t know anyone who opposes Obama based on his race, but I do know plenty of people who oppose him based on his liberal voting record and flawed policy positions.