I have playing with the fact that America elected its first Catholic president in 1960, but it has no elected one since. The second point is the odd one. Even before the Hispanic invasion, Catholics were over a fourth of the American population.

And in 1960 the old stereotype completely escaped the facts. Despite all the talk about the “privileged WASPs, per capita Catholic income was higher than per capita Protestant income. Even “working class” Irish, once called shanty Irish, the people I worked with in Boston and Chicago, had union jobs in industry that paid wages that were the envy of many a WASP manager.

So here we had a quarter of the voting population, solidly middle and upper income and we have not had another Catholic president since 1963.
And I am the only one who seems to wonder about it. I haven’t hear any born and bred Catholics even bring it up.

It was THE issue among Catholics in 1960. I believe that even then-affluent Upper Darby, PA, “Ninety per cent Catholic and ninety percent Republican,” went for Kennedy. But since then the question has not come up.

But the Kennedy experience is altogether different from the Obama experience. Catholics needed get over the 1928 Al Smith experience and prove a Catholic could be president. To sum it up, Catholics wanted to make a point, but didn’t feel inferior.

Blacks will always feel inferior, even with a black president, a black pope, and world full of blacks kings. Catholics never asked for affirmative action. Blacks want it forever.