Alan Keyes

“Republicans Weighing Best Way to Reach Out to Blacks” (Dec. 23) continues the embarrassing failure of The Times to cover the real import of the presidential campaign of Alan Keyes. The central point of the Keyes campaign--that the real American Dream is the dream of moral integrity, not material wealth--provides the real point of potential contact between the black community and the GOP. The story you ought to be covering is the unwillingness of any Republican presidential candidate except Keyes to campaign under the banner of the moral identity of all Americans.

GOP failure to appeal to the black community is merely a side effect of the failure of the party leadership to articulate the emerging national consensus that, as Keyes puts it, “We don’t have money problems, we have moral problems.”

The Times should show enough journalistic zeal to look just a little bit past the received wisdom of the “hopelessness” of the Keyes campaign to the actual national grass-roots fire it is igniting, and the real political success it has already achieved.

DAVID QUACKENBUSH

Vice Chairman, Californians for Keyes