One poll finds that only 28 percent of the American public approves of the job Bush has done with the economy.

That leads to the inevitable question: "Who are these 28 percent? Oil company execs?"

Chill, my Republican pals. My aim is not to bash Bush, but to praise him. Honest.

Watching the Democratic candidates' debate this week between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it struck me that we can thank Bush -- or, depending upon how you feel about the matter, blame Bush -- for the fact that a woman and a black man are considered serious candidates for the presidency.

Why? Because Bush has botched the job so badly that people are willing to turn to anyone for relief?

Nope. In a textbook example of what might be called unintended consequences, Bush has opened the door for the Oval Office to become more inclusive, all because he placed a black woman and a black man in positions of unprecedented power.

AFTER SEVEN-PLUS YEARS OF EITHER COLIN POWELL OR CONDOLEEZZA RICE as secretary of state, most people have become used to seeing black Americans in positions of influence at the government's topmost levels.

There may be a few holdouts still fighting the Civil War who will never accept blacks in positions of such power, but the other 95 percent of Americans now realize that you can be any color and screw up.

Or succeed.

Both Rice and Powell, as did all of their predecessors in office, met with varying degrees of success and failure. Despite his efforts, Powell, for instance, couldn't persuade the hawks in the Bush administration to eschew the unnecessary, costly war in Iraq.

As for Rice, former National Security adviser Richard Clarke contends that he frequently tried to warn her (his successor in the post) prior to 9/11 that al-Qaida posed an imminent threat to the United States. Yet, he says, neither she nor her boss was overly concerned. As a result, we were monumentally unprepared for Sept. 11, 2001.

Still, except for Oprah Winfrey, Rice may be the most powerful woman in the free world.

Considering that the secretary of state is the highest-ranking Cabinet member and fourth in line to the presidency -- and considering Vice President Dick Cheney's health concerns, not to mention his proclivity for shooting hunting partners -- there was a genuine possibility that the secretary could ascend to the throne and become chief executive.

So the irony of a Republican president being unfairly derided by a singer (Kanye West, after Hurricane Katrina) for not caring about black people, but naming two black secretaries of state, shouldn't be lost.

THINK ABOUT IT. When Andrew Young played perhaps the most important role anyone did in getting Democrat Jimmy Carter elected as president in 1976 -- many blacks were skeptical of a south Georgia peanut farmer -- the best Young could get as a reward was the largely ceremonial, totally toothless position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

In retrospect, it wouldn't have been surprising to see Young wearing one of those "Someone went to the White House and all I got was this stupid job" T-shirts.

Although it's unlikely that President Bush will put it on his resume if he ever has to apply for a job at Wal-Mart, he will nonetheless be highly responsible for the election of a black or woman president.

Whenever it occurs.

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