Jonathan Mann
CNN International
HISTORY repeats itself and sometimes it does it fast. It took more than 200 years for the United States to elect its first African-American president. Now, without much comment, millions of voters are thinking of electing another African-American to succeed him.
Republican Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no political experience, is surging to the top of recent polls, a Christian conservative who preaches the merits of small government, self-reliance and faith.
"I love it when people come up to me and they say, 'but you've never been elected to public office, you can't possibly know how to do anything’," Carson mused. "But let me tell you something. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals."
As ships go, Caron's has the wind in its sails. He has moved from the middle of the crowded field of Republican candidates to a close second place behind billionaire Donald Trump. In more than one poll, the difference between the two is within the statistical margin of error, which means it's too close to call. But Trump's numbers are steady and Carson's have been rising.
Maybe the more interesting comparison is with Barack Obama. They have utterly opposing political instincts — but one striking parallel in their past. Both Obama, 54, and Carson, 64, were raised by strong-willed mothers after their fathers abandoned them.
In Carson's autobiography, one of eight books he's written, we learn that his mother was one of 25 children and married at age 13. She had two children before she discovered her husband was a bigamist with a second family and then raised her boys on her own.
Carson describes his mother as nearly illiterate but he studied hard enough to enroll at prestigious Yale University and become a celebrated pediatric brain surgeon. Among his patients, conjoined twins attached at the head. No one had ever successfully separated children like that until Carson.
Carson will be among the candidates at the next Republican debate. It's Tuesday night in the US, very early Wednesday morning in Europe, and Carson alone might make it worth tuning in. He's soft-spoken and chooses his words slowly, but he says some startling things.
He called America's new health-insurance scheme, known as Obamacare, "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."
Carson insists he does want every American to have access to healthcare but to do it without state intervention, which he says gives the government life-and-death power over its citizens.
Whatever the policy he has in mind, the slavery comparison was an extraordinary one for an African-American to make, especially one who has rarely mentioned race during the course of his campaign.
That may be one of the big surprises of the Carson candidacy. Unlike Obama’s run for office eight years ago, no one seems to be paying much attention to the color of his skin.
Obama has made the once-unthinkable idea of a black man in the White House into a mundane and familiar fact.
CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein says Carson also has a more interesting attribute, for the evangelical Christians who are an influential voting bloc in the Republican Party: he talks about religion openly and often.
"He's benefiting more from his faith than his race. Having said that, it is an open question whether Carson will face limits among white Republican voters, particularly in the South, if he remains viable deep into the process."
In the meantime, the doctor is in and the prognosis is promising. — Courtesy CNN International.
— Jonathan Mann hosts Political Mann on CNN International.
