The Race Issue, Up Front and Ugly
01 August 2008 12:07 am by Taylor Marsh
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The latest salvos between these two camps started when John McCain’s ad “Celeb”
hit the airwaves. People said it was such a silly ad. Unfortunately, it worked,
because Barack Obama took the bait and then amped
it up.
“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges
we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,”
Obama said. “You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’
you know, ‘He doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the
dollar bills.’” …… .. Obama often makes references to his distinctions as a candidate, such
as saying there are doubts among some voters because he has “a funny
name.” At times he refers to his race as well, saying he looks different
from any previous candidate but then adding that the differences are not just
about race. Addressing supporters Tuesday night at a fundraiser in Springfield,
he said, “It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named
Barack Obama.”
Obama said it in Missouri, a place that has had more than its share of racial,
let’s just call them, challenges. I grew up in Missouri, spending my
teen years in St. Louis. I remember high school, with kids being bussed in from another high school. Missouri has its history. Talking about race there means something.
Rick Davis accused Obama of playing the race card, “from the
bottom of the deck.” It was like I was rocketed back to that
1990s trial, Johnny Cochran, “If it doesn’t fit…” More
like it’s just not fitting. I’m not
the only one who heard it that way.
So, here we go.
However, what I didn’t hear, see or sense in the first place from McCain’s
“Celeb” ad, was the racism people were screaming about, with some
diving over the rhetorical cliff. It was about celebrity, but The New York
Times felt it important to add fuel to the fire by bringing Harold Ford’s senate race into the mix. “Celeb” was not “Fancy Ford.”
Not by a long shot.
I’ve been here before. But this time it was Obama
who had to back it up.
… “Say whatever you want about Bill Clinton,” Schmidt said, “but it’s deeply unfair to suggest his criticism of Obama was race-based. President Clinton was a force for unity in this country on this subject. Every American should be proud of his record as both a governor and president. But we knew it was coming in our direction because they did it against a President of the United State of their own party.”
A former chief strategist to Hillary Clinton, Howard Wolfson, echoed
Schmidt’s comparison.“I think the McCain camp watched our primary on the Democratic side
very carefully and they know that any accusation of racial divisiveness can
be very, very harmful for a candidate’s prospects,” Wolfson said on Fox
News Thursday, adding that the allegations against Clinton were unfair. “They
heard something that Senator Obama said and they felt they had to respond
quickly to make sure that nobody got the impression that they were engaged
in those kind of racial politics.”Schmidt said McCain’s aides felt forced to talk about race, and that they
don’t plan to do it again.But the aftermath of this campaign flashpoint — which began with a
McCain ad using Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to paint Obama as a preening
rock star — indicated points were scored for the Republican side.Obama’s campaign quickly put out a statement Thursday retracting the candidate’s
suggestion that McCain had improperly used race, and, while on a conference
call with reporters, campaign manager David Plouffe declined repeatedly to
revisit any aspect of the question of race.“We weren’t suggesting in any way he was using race as an
issue,” Plouffe said of McCain, though he didn’t explain how Obama’s
words could be taken any other way. He also declined to engage speculation
that McCain was responding so forcefully to highlight Obama’s race. …
No one can doubt that Republicans have used the fear card over and over again
since 9/11. Democrats were so afraid of being called cowards they launched us
into a bad war to prove they had the spine to fight “the war on terror.”
So Obama got that part of his campaign patter absolutely correct. But then he
blew it, over-reaching and interjecting, “It’s a leap, electing
a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama” into the political
bloodstream.
Nobody doubted that race would be an issue in this campaign. But being a lily
white Irish-Scots broad who grew up in Missouri during certain times, I have
no problem standing up, speaking out and pushing back when someone’s using the
race card because they’re getting criticized and they don’t like what I’ve written
or said. Being white doesn’t make me stupid.
The “Celeb” ad was about the culture of celebrity,
hitting Obama hard, which obviously struck a nerve because they’ve been on the defensive ever
since. Obama threw a couple of word bombs. McCain’s team sent a message back.
Obama then backed up.
Republicans don’t care what you call them. They just care that they win, and
they never bring knives to a gun fight.
UPDATE: ABC News gets Axelrod to state the obvious:
But Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background. When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”
