Muhammad Ali, long before anyone could imagine an African-American President, sagely suggested that a person of color will hold that office only once the job has become completely undesirable.

From “Ego,” the 1971 Norman Mailer Life article mentioned in the video:

Muhammad Ali begins with the most unsettling ego of all. Having commanded the stage, he never pretends to step back and relinquish his place to other actors–like a six-foot parrot, he keeps screaming at you that he is the center of the stage, ‘Come here, and get me, fool,’ he says. ‘You can’t, ’cause you don’t know who I am. You don’t know where I am. I’m human intelligence and you don’t even know if I’m good or evil.’ This has been his essential message to America all these years. It is intolerable to our American mentality that the figure who is probably most prominent to us after the President is simply not comprehensible, for he could be a demon or a saint. Or both!•