Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama grinds through the mills of analysis, declared significant by the former secretary of state's admirers and Obama supporters and trivialized in the shrill echo chambers of the Limbaughs, Lingles and low-information voters as merely a black man standing up for another black man.

How much of an influence a seal of approval from a well-respected man largely identified with the Republican Party will have is anybody's guess.

Except for the voters still “;undecided”; after all this time, I suspect most people are ready for Nov. 4, if not to cast their ballots, then to shut down the noise machines that can drown out rational discussion in political campaigns.

In his interview on “;Meet the Press,”; Powell did more than back up the Hawaii-born Obama.

He asked, “;So what?”; Not in those exact terms, but in the thrust of his words when he brought up the fake Muslim issue.

You'd have to have been riding the Mars Rover if you missed the claim of some of the delusional fringe of the McCain-Palin ticket that the Punahou School graduate, whose family still lives in Hawaii, is secretly a follower of the religion of Islam.

Powell said the response to that lie is to correct it, to say Obama is, in fact, a Christian.

“;But the really right answer is, what if he is?”; Powell said. “;Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America.”;

Others have made the same observation, but Powell's voice is louder than the mutterings of political panelists in the battalions of pundits on television and in the blogosphere.

The “;so what”; question should be asked more often.

It was posed to Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, when she used “;liberal”; as a pejorative to describe not only Obama, but her Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill.

So what if they're liberals? Well, Bachmann said on MSNBC's “;Hardball,”; liberals are anti-American and the news media should investigate and expose them, find out who in Congress is pro-American and anti-American. She gave no standard by which to measure, but I'd guess that pro-American certification would be based on who agrees with her.

Channeling Joseph McCarthy has put Bachmann's re-election, thought to be a sure thing, in jeopardy. Her opponent drew in more campaign contributions in the days since the broadcast than he'd received in the past three months.

So what? Judging from polls and voters' reaction, it seems ugliness isn't what people want in political campaigns. Yet lies and slurs and divisiveness continue on.

But just when you give up hope for decency and respect, someone asks the question at the right time.

At a McCain rally in Virginia last weekend, a small group of hate-mongers repeating the “;Obama is a Muslim”; fiction, were confronted by McCain supporters. Both Christians and Muslims, they stood together to defend a person's right to choose a religion and if a candidate chose Islam, they said, so what? The bigotry the group was encouraging, they said, wasn't what this country wanted or needed. That's what, and that's the truth.