Jon Margolis, former chief political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the author of "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964," lives in northeastern Vermont, where he writes and teaches.

Are we all forgetting something?

Or, more precisely, ignoring something?

Well, not entirely, at least not any more. Not since Maureen Dowd’s column in Sunday’s New York Times declared that one reason for the current political tumult is that “some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”

Until Dowd’s column, the possible racial (if not racist) inspiration for the intensity and severity of some of the opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposal had been notably absent from the mainstream press.

For good reason. Dowd is a columnist, and can make an assertion which cannot be conclusively—or even persuasively—demonstrated by empirically testable evidence. There are no statistics proving that any of Obama’s critics are motivated by racial animosity, nor have any of those critics come out and proclaimed that their problem with the president is that he is not a white guy.

Mainstream reporters generally need that kind of evidence to delve into the likely motivations of political activists left or right. Of course they can always quote the other side’s suggestions—unreasonable though they might be—that the bizarre behavior of their opponents stems from one social pathology or other. Heaven knows enough conservative campaigners have been quoted explaining that Obama is pursuing “socialism.”

So far, though, prominent Democrats and liberals have been reluctant to suggest that what really galls the “Tea Party” demonstrators or other anti-Obama forces is the color of the President’s skin. A few left-of-center bloggers have made the point, usually with their typical lack of subtlety. But reporters rarely quote opinion columnists, even the ones who opine in print.

Besides, reporters rightly worry that assailing the motives of one side will give the impression that they also disagree with that side’s policy position. Reporters are not supposed to take sides on policy disputes.

Nor is there any need to do so here. Reasonable people may disagree with this president without displaying or harboring an iota of bigotry. In fact, something else that has been largely absent from the coverage is much attempt to understand the rational concerns that might lie beneath some of the intense opposition, even some of the irrationality. 

Rarely if ever , at least in peacetime, has the Federal Government inserted itself so deeply and so bluntly into the private economy. Rarely if ever has it spent so much money in the process. Rarely if ever, at least in peacetime, have the deficit and the debt been as high or projected to grow as high as they are now. Considering the economic realities, those deficit and debt levels might well be justified, or even too low. Still, a citizen need not be bigoted or more generally irrational to believe the Feds are doing too much, too soon

None of which justifies concluding , in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama was not born in the United States, or that he is planning to euthanize Grandma, or to convert school children into devotees of  Che Guevara. Something bizarre is going on here, and if it is not completely unprecedented, it does seem to be both louder and more visible than ever before. It needs examination.

Just consider the farthest-out “Tea Party” response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the Stimulus Package as it is generally known. It’s a policy, and like all policies it has its flaws, which in the view of some observers might outweigh its merits.

But it is not radical. It is right out of Economics 101, where we learn that in a downturn policy makers should lower interest rates. If, after those rates are as low as they can go, firms are still not investing and individuals still not consuming at a good enough clip to perk up the economy, there are two choices. Either the government spends and invests to pick up the slack, or it accepts a long and deep recession, or a depression as it is otherwise known. 

Actually, that last choice being political suicide, it is no choice at all. Leaving the other one: spend money. Precisely how and how much are open to debate. The whole policy may be open to debate. What is not open to debate is that the policy is mainstream, not much different than the one John McCain would have pursued had he won the election. It is not, from any rational perspective,  un-American, socialist, or somehow a stride toward Hitler’s fascism. But that is what the “Tea Party” signs claimed. Something else is in the air, some visceral antipathy to Obama. Mere policy disagreement does not inspire such folly.

It need not be racism. To many Americans, there are a host of reasons why Obama “isn’t one of us.” He’s somewhat exotic. He was born in Hawaii, to a father who wasn’t himself Muslim but whose family was, and a mother who was…well, let’s just say unconventional. Part of his childhood was spent in Indonesia. He went to Harvard Law School. He’s sort of an intellectual. He’s thin. 

Furthermore, the attacks on Obama aren’t that much different, or that much more absurd, than some of the allegations made about Bill Clinton. So far, at least, no one has argued that Obama committed a murder or two in his past, as Jerry Falwell accused Clinton of doing. 

 As liberal blogger Matt Yglesias noted, for decades, “the Democratic Party has typically presented itself in national politics as representing a coalition of “outsider” groups—Catholics & Jews back in the day, nonwhites and seculars more recently. The actual identity of the leader of the coalition matters, but only at the margin.”

Maybe, but that margin is not necessarily a small one. To deny that racial animosity is part of the mix is to deny that racial animosity exists. It exists, and not just in the Deep South. At the lunch counter in my 99-percent white rural Vermont town (which Obama carried with ease), a fellow sat down a few weeks ago and asked the assemblage, “you know why Obama’s gonna ban Bayer Aspirin? It’s white and it works.” Chuckles all around. 

These are not raging bigots who want African-Americans to sit in the back of the bus and not vote. But having a black president? That bothers them. They have heard that not long from now white, Anglo, Americans will be a minority. That bothers them, too. They are white, Anglo, Americans. It is important to them. 

The President is not a socialist. No doubt some of the people calling him that really believe it, but many of them really have another term in mind. 

No, not that one. At least not necessarily. But something else tribal, if not as offensive. Because there are no objective criteria or measurable tests to determine who and how many anti-Obama activists are thus motivated, responsible journalists are in a bit of a pickle in figuring out how to describe the protests. 

Pickles come with the job.