DES MOINES
In an unusually high-profile observance of Martin Luther King's birthday, the most important political dateline in the country may not have been here. More likely it was Columbia, S.C., where nearly 50,000 people participated in a march to protest the continued presence of the Confederate battle flag, which flies there just under Old Glory.
Until now the national exposure for this crude embarrassment has consisted primarily of the Republican presidential candidates dancing awkwardly and insensitively around the issue, competing in their rush to yield to states' rights - much as earlier generations yielded when the issue was segregation.
This week it became clear that the battle flag - which was run up the State House pole nearly 40 years ago as a symbol of defiance on civil rights, not as a way to honor ''heritage'' - may have legs as a values issue.
The NAACP's march showed the strength of what polls in South Carolina, as well as the rest of the country, indicate is the majority sentiment: that as a symbol of a secession and slavery as well as civil rights denial and defiance, the battle flag should be condemned. In a country still struggling with racism, such symbols are never appropriate and should never be tolerated.
That sentiment got an airing here as Bill Bradley and Al Gore competed in their denunciatory language about the flag during their final debate before next week's pivotal precinct caucuses.
For those who have grown tired of their hard-edged competition, this was a debate where two men with solid credentials and long records on civil rights and poverty put them on display before a largely nonwhite audience. The debate did not change the Gore-tilted political equation, but its importance transcends that.
The event was part of the Brown-Black Forum, which was conceived in 1984 by Wayne Ford, then and now the only African-American in the Legislature in a state whose black and Hispanic populations barely exceed 1 percent of the total.
Ford's intent was to go beyond caucus politics to address one of the central weaknesses of the presidential campaign. This year's dominant reality may be the front-loading of the process, with three-dozen states exploding in an orgy of primary voting in early March, but the fact remains that Iowa and New Hampshire (both almost lily white) winnow the field brutally.
The idea behind the Brown-Black Forum is to get the Democratic candidates pinned down early on major issues involving race and poverty. The additional benefit this week was the contrast presented with recent statements by the Republicans.
For example, Bradley and Gore competed in their condemnation of ''racial profiling'' - the stopping of nonwhite people by the police in white neighborhoods and in cases where nonwhites are possible suspects.
Gore reminded the audience that he has said that on his first day as president he will issue an executive order banning profiling by federal authorities and will formally ask Congress to outlaw it nationally.
Bradley happens to agree strongly, but he told Gore that he should get President Clinton to issue the executive order right now.
That gave Gore the opening to play his Clinton card and tell Bradley that the president needed no lectures from the former senator on race relations and to note that Newark's Mayor Sharpe James (New Jersey is inflamed over this issue) was in the audience and is supporting him.
It was an excellent exchange, but I couldn't help flipping through my notebook to the recent GOP debate in Michigan to find the words used by Texas Governor George W. Bush to temporize on this same basic question.
Bush said it is not the role of the federal government to ''run state police departments'' and then launched into a bromide-filled riff about how everybody thinks too much about groups and not about what unites us. The fact that basic civil rights and constitutional protections are involved did not seem to have occurred to him.
Bush's behavior reeked of primary politics. His obvious attempts to avoid anything that might offend the minority, superconservative base of his party, however, may end up undercutting his deserved reputation in Texas as a decent, fair person.
There's a hoary cliche that candidates run to their left and right in the primary season, depending on the party, and then back to the center for the general election. It's true.
But race, America's curse, is different. Wherever and whenever it rears its head in politics, the question is not really who made what cute move and who will gain or lose votes as a result. With race, the question is always who we are as people.
It's a shame that it took 50,000 dignified souls in South Carolina this week to remind us of that.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
