With Nov. 4 around the corner and an electorate more unified behind Barack Obama than we’ve seen for any presidential candidate since at least 1996, the Republican ticket has determined that it must cynically redivide the country in a relentless campaign of character assassination.
It began this weekend, with Sarah Palin on Saturday accusing Obama of “palling around” with domestic terrorists, in an absurd charge that proves that John McCain’s campaign isn’t worried about being subtle as it exploits the barely subterranean racial resentment that can be found in many parts of the country.
Palin was more explicit later: “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. Obama has always espoused a deep love of country borne of the unique opportunities offered to him by America throughout his life. In a direct contradiction to Palin’s claim that Obama does not believe in American “exceptionalism,” he has repeated from the beginning of the campaign, “America is the only country where my story is even possible.”
Palin’s attacks signal McCain’s desire to begin a new phase in the campaign, and her remarks are just the first shot in what McCain’s campaign has said will be a sustained assault. Expect a television advertisement by Wednesday.
With the economy at the center of national attention, McCain has seen a precipitous drop in the polls recently and is now on a trajectory to lose the election. His only chance is to take the focus off “the issues” so that the race can be defined by each candidate’s “character” instead.
Palin’s false attacks paint a frightening image of Obama’s character: a dangerously ambiguous man, up to who-knows-what on the streets of Chicago for decades, peer-pressured into closet radicalism by all his corrupting “associations.” What kind of shady, America-hating “community” has Obama been “organizing” anyway?
The truth is that Obama lives a few blocks from William Ayers, a former domestic terrorist who has been an academic since the ’80s. He is a nationally respected expert on education and has written 15 books. Several years ago, the men served on the boards of directors of two charitable initiatives together.
By all accounts, including The New York Times Article that Palin cited in her comments, Obama and Ayers have no relationship beyond a distant association built while working on similar public-sector issues. When Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate, Ayers, by then considered by many Chicagoans to be a “rehabilitated” member of the community, hosted a fundraiser for him. In recent years, Obama has severed his relationship with Ayers.
What makes Palin’s attack so despicable is the implication that Obama must be hiding something. When George Bush claimed in 2000 that he was a “compassionate conservative,” people took his word for it. No one suggested in 1992 that Bill Clinton was a closet marxist. Obama, however, has repeatedly had his motives, volition and honesty questioned, and his words distorted by the fantasies of paranoid nativists that make up a significant portion of the Republican party.
Probably no candidate before Obama has been called “manchurian” so many times, and everyone has heard of the racially-tinged lies being spread by e-mail about him. What difference between Obama and previous presidential candidates, if not race, explains why he is being attacked so viciously as some kind of conspiratorial tool of radicals?
Anyone who is moved toward McCain by Palin’s dishonest attacks is assuming that Barack Obama cannot think for himself, that he is the subject of a liberal “group mind,” the collective unconscious of “America-haters” everywhere that guides liberal actions like the rudder on a ship. Because Obama lives near someone with radical views, he must also have radical views — or so the logic states.
In fact, Obama has displayed independence on a host of issues over a long period of time. He is a pragmatist with moderate policies following in the steps of Bill Clinton. One of his main campaign promises is the simple pledge to compromise, as he has done recently with energy policy (agreeing to support offshore drilling in return for government funding for alternative energy).
But building consensus behind good ideas is not a priority for the Republican Party. Their slash-and-burn approach, smearing Obama with attacks designed to alienate him from middle-class voters based on the color of his skin, foreshadows four years of gridlock, resentment and further division if McCain is elected.
United, Obama wins; divided, America will suffer.