What is the difference between pandering and leadership? Simple: When you go before a group of voters and tell them what they want to hear, that's pandering. But when you go before the same group and tell them what they need to hear, even if it isn't popular, that's leadership.

Kudos to Barack Obama and John McCain, who both showed leadership this week by using appearances before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Cincinnati to tell African-Americans some things they ought to hear.

Like this: African-Americans (and all Americans) need to assume more personal responsibility for their own lives and demand as much from themselves as they demand from government. And this: Teachers unions care primarily about protecting the interests of their members, and they team up with Democrats in Congress to kill school voucher and choice programs popular with African-American parents whose kids are trapped in failing schools.

The first message came from Obama, who has taken criticism from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the usual suspects for talking about how African-American men need to do a better job of owning up to their responsibilities as fathers. This week Obama told the NAACP that, even though he took heat for talking about responsibility, he is "not going to stop talking about it." As Obama noted, government spending only takes you so far "if we don't seize more responsibility in our own lives."

Bravo. African-Americans aren't the only group in this country who think in terms of entitlements. But it's impossible to talk about how they might advance in the future without eventually zeroing in on personal responsibility. Government isn't the savior. In fact, people often need to be saved from government.

Which brings us to what McCain said to NAACP members Wednesday about the mess African-American students are in, how they got there and, most important, how they can get out. McCain noted that Democrats in Congress oppose school choice to placate the teachers unions. This includes Obama, who has dismissed the "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice." McCain asked, "Where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?"

Good question. Mostly, it leaves them out of options, out of hope, and out of luck. And the shame of it is that the people who are presiding over this fiasco are the same folks insisting they have in mind the best interests of African-Americans and other low-income constituents. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When people hear that presidential candidates are speaking to a group such as the NAACP the temptation is to denigrate it as racial or ethnic pandering. But that is terribly narrow-minded. It depends on what is said. And what was said in Cincinnati was worth hearing.

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