Clyburn seeks to smooth the waves

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) joined in the call to calm the racial debate that has been roiling the crucial South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, saying it’s distracting from real issues.

“I am hopeful these candidates will be allowed to lay out their vision for our country,” Clyburn said in a briefing for reporters Tuesday. “That cannot be done if all the focus is on distant factors like race or gender.”

In the lengthy briefing Clyburn, whose leadership position in Congress had made him a powerbroker in South Carolina politics, doled out praise in roughly equal measures to contenders Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama.

{mosads}“I don’t think anyone who looked at their records would doubt their commitment to equality,” Clyburn said.

But he reiterated his plan to make no endorsement in the Jan. 26 primary.

“I told my party I had to stay out of it,” he said. “I would be breaking with too many people.”

As to the argument between Clinton and Obama that started the fracas on the issue of race, Clyburn said it is wrong to argue whether Martin Luther King Jr. or President Lyndon Johnson was more important to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1964.

“I don’t think you can go back and make value judgments about who was more important, the person who brings it to the table or the person who gets it passed,” Clyburn said.