McCain: Playing With Fire

Posted 2:29 p.m., Oct. 7, 2008

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Let us confess it. Throughout the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, there has been lingering in the darker folds of the collective cerebellum a fear that dares not utter its name. I'll utter it here.

With every live television appearance, the dread, solicitous thought appears: Is this the RFK moment? Is this when Barack Obama gets shot down before our very eyes?

It's a fear that has thus far proven both wrong and, hopefully, wrong-headed. The American people are better than that, one's thoughts whisper reassuringly. Bobby Kennedy's murder was four decades ago. Candidates are protected now. This is a different age. Obama will be fine.

There have always been plenty of reasons to be concerned about Obama's safety in this campaign. Now they are multiplying.

That's because the McCain campaign, in desperation, is changing the narrative. Now Obama is--according to the McCain campaign's bald assertion--a dangerous and (quite literally) dark enigma.

(Though not really: Read "Dreams From My Father," a well-crafted book where Obama lays bare the foundations of his life and ideals for all to see. But then, for Gov. Sarah Palin's base, the enigma is safely preserved: For them, the ability to write, or to read at length, is as exotic and useless a talent as wiggling one's ears. Who needs print when you got talk radio?)

A dark enigma, indeed, and a suspicious one. Obama shares a funny middle name, Hussein, with one of the great villains of our time. It was handed down from Obama's Kenyan Muslim grandfather, a man Obama never met and whose faith he never shared. No matter. It's there, it's real, it's useful. Say the word, and the candidate is instantly transformed into a radical Islamist.

Oh, and, lest we forget, Obama is black. (Remember Rev. Wright? Well, you certainly won't be allowed to forget him now.)

It's true that these "spooky Obama" factors were all given a very close inspection during the primary campaign, when Obama was still duking it out with Hillary Clinton.

Most Americans have examined them--and, after being seriously taken aback by some of them, particularly the Black Panther-like perversities of pastor Jeremiah Wright--they concluded that Obama addressed them to their satisfaction. Most of the electorate has moved on, and the "scary factor" is not likely to have much macro impact on voters.

Which is to say, most Americans feel they know Obama well enough to make a decision whether he should be president or not on the merits. They don't have to decide whether Obama means to save the country, or blow up it up.

Most Americans feel that way.

But we are now moving to very dangerous ground.

The Big Bet

McCain is losing. And as he pointed out in a cable TV interview recently, he is a betting man.

So now, the Republican's campaign, which never really landed on a consistent strategy, finally has one. And it's based on McCain's biggest bet of all.

If McCain can make Obama scary, make Obama a terrorist's consort, make Obama blacker, maybe he can make Americans forget that their economy is in meltdown and that McCain--who privately calls himself the "original neocon"--was a motivating force behind the greatest geopolitical blunder in American history.

Maybe he can even win.

Roll the dice; damn the torpedoes.

Palin, the chipper, high-heeled, bare-knuckled populist from Alaska, has become the point person for this line of attack. She recently quoted the New York Times (falsely) to remind voters that Obama, early in his political career, "palled around" with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.

Ayers is a former member of the Weather Underground, a group of new-left radical fools from the 1960s. Ayers took part in the bombing of a statue dedicated to the Haymarket Bombing in Chicago, a blast that blew out a lot of windows and launched pieces of statue onto the Kennedy Expressway. It didn't kill anybody, but it wasn't a very nice thing to do. No excuses, mind you, but ultimately, no conviction either.

Still, it's not hard to see why people are appalled to find out that Ayers is considered some sort of education-reform guru in Chicago. It's hard to understand why he is embraced by Chicago's mayor after what he did. About as hard as it is to understand the left-wing St. Paul politicians who rushed to the defense of Sarah Jane Olson after she was unmasked as one of the Symbionese Liberation Army's murderous bank robbers.

But it is also relevant that Obama was only 8 years old when Ayers was running around wild-eyed in the '60s. It is relevant that he has never expressed the slightest support for what Ayers did. It is relevant, as the New York Times actually did report, that the men's encounters have been fleeting, and they have never been close in any way.

But not to Palin:

"'[Obama] is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,' [Palin] said. 'We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.'"

-- Gov. Sarah Palin,
The Associated Press
Oct. 5, 2008

Palin, meanwhile, just can't understand why the Wright connection isn't more frequently discussed. She'll certainly find time to fill that void.

And so now we have it. The central front in the war on Obama.

"'Kill him!' proposed one man in [Palin's] audience."

-- Dana Milbank,
The Washington Post
Oct. 7, 2008

McCain is not exempting himself from this game. Monday, at a campaign rally in New Mexico, the candidate himself raised the loaded question: "Who is the real Barack Obama?" At least one audience member knew the answer. On the videotape of the event, the first, loudest voice is heard to shout, "Terrorist!"

See for yourself:

The Sin of Irresponsibility

Make no mistake here: McCain's campaign does not wish harm to come to Obama. They are not that heartless or that stupid. They know that, should Obama be cut down, the Republicans would stand no chance of winning the election because, given their recent behavior, they would be blamed for it.

Their sin is in the irresponsibility of the gamble.

The McCain campaign is betting that there is no next-gen Arthur Bremer lurking out there, pasting newspaper clippings with Palin's more incendiary quotes on the walls of some seedy motel near some sleepy campaign stop. Someone who thinks he intuits the "true values" of America, and who is compelled to save the U.S.A. from its liberal self.

As I say, the biggest bet of all. And as a direct consequence, Obama's life is being cavalierly put at risk.

By dint of who he is, by dint of the place the black man has traditionally held in this society, Obama already has the faint outlines of a target affixed to his forehead.

It shouldn't be too much to ask the McCain campaign to move their laser pointers off of it.

-- Kevin Featherly

Turns out I'm not the only one thinking this way. Recent RFK campaign biographer Thurston Clarke has written a similar column. Thanks to Jon Rauch for sending the link.

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