Whole Deck of Race Cards

The Issue That Dared Not Speak Its Name is now on everybody's lips, including John McCain's and Barack Obama's own. Is this good or bad? Maybe both.

On the positive side, it's healthy to drag prejudice into the open (fresh air as a disinfectant and all that). Those who vote against Obama because of race should at the very least be made to squirm for it, if they have the capacity for being embarrassed, instead of hiding behind euphemisms.

But we are now involved in a more convoluted debate that threatens to diminish all sides. Let's review the bidding:

After the Jeremiah Wright YouTube rants, Obama made his Philadelphia speech about race, was almost universally applauded for it and prepared to move on.

But Hillary Clinton's sudden enormous popularity with "working-class voters" in the late primaries showed that millions had a wee problem seeing a black person in the White House, and it was inevitable that Republican swiftboaters would notice and act accordingly.

Obama, in effect, challenged them to try. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run,” he told Americans in June. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

For the past month, the McCain campaign has been doing just that, using "different" and "flashy" as its locutions of choice.

Responding to the Britney Spears-Paris Hilton ad, Bob Herbert in today's New York Times muses:

"Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office--say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford--the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates."

When Obama himself hit back, he was accused of playing the race card. “I did not bring up the issue," John McCain says in his best I'm-shocked,shocked style. “Senator Obama...brought up the issue of race, I responded to it...I’m disappointed, and I don’t want that issue to be part of this campaign."

So what we have now is a whole deck of race cards, with double edges, on the table. Once the August silly season is over and the Conventions start, politicians on both sides will be talking about the economy, wars and threats other than Obama's skin tone. But the issue will be there, under the radar, all the way to November.

Jesse Jackson's Apologies

In 1984, when he called Jews "Hymies" and New York "Hymietown" while talking to an African-American reporter for the Washington Post, Jesse Jackson denied that he did, and it took a month for him to admit it and apologize.

More than two decades later, the Rev. Jackson has learned to be quicker to own up to his hurtful mouthings, apologizing to Barack Obama before anyone heard it for being caught by a microphone on Fox News, of all places, saying, "Barack's been talking down to black people...I want to cut his nuts off."

Jackson's reflexes have improved, but his prejudices are as strong as ever and, in the case of Obama, his apparent resentment. In South Carolina, he had accused the Democratic candidate of "acting white."

As an African-American leader, you know you've stepped over the line when Al Sharpton calls what you said "most unfortunate" and your own son says he is "deeply outraged and disappointed."

It may be time for Jackson to join Jeremiah Wright Jr. in an ecclesiastical retreat involving vows of silence.

Clergy Cuckooland

We are in new territory this year when politicians renounce men of God for their wildly divisive rhetoric, as Barack Obama did yesterday in resigning from Trinity United Church of Christ after the bombast of Rev. Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the bad taste of Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest.

Earlier in the month, John McCain cut loose his dynamic duo of Pastor John Hagee and the Reverend Rod Parsley for their hate-mongering.

In earlier times, it was the clergy who denounced such behavior by candidates for public office, but in the era of televangelism and mega-churches, the competition for worshippers has become as intense as the scramble for votes.

The YouTubing that has punished candidates for breaching political correctness (pace George Allen of Macaca fame) is just now catching up with preachers, many of whom have been uninhibited in their expression by the certainty that they are doing God's work.

But that's all changing. Even the sainted Billy Graham, adviser to Presidents since Eisenhower, was embarrassed by the recent release of audiotapes of his agreeing with Nixon about the "stranglehold" of Jews on American media and encouraging him by saying, "If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something."

In politics as well as religion, God works in mysterious ways. You never know who's listening.

Hillary's Last Hurrah

So it ends not with a bang but a whimper, the slow dribbling away of her "tiebreaker" victory in Indiana as Barack Obama seals the nomination in North Carolina, "a big state, a swing state," as he put it, and more to the point, a state that gave him a resounding margin after the Jeremiah Wright disaster brought his viability into question.

The chatter about Florida and Michigan, the blather about remaining primaries should start to fade as the superdelegate slide toward Obama begins in earnest and the Democratic Party gets itself together for November.

Obama, in effect, gave his acceptance speech last night and began the campaign against John McCain. Clinton talked gamely about fighting on, but there was a valedictory tone in her voice. Both started the painful process of reaching out for unity and, if Obama chooses, sharing the ticket.

The New York Times headline, "Options Dwindling for Clinton," is an understatement. The campaign is running out of money, running out of arguments about electability and out of contortions to make the primary process look closer than it has been.

What Obama has accomplished in little more than a year, aside from the racial breakthrough, is unprecedented in modern American politics--coming from relative obscurity to take the nomination from a dynastic opponent who was almost universally believed to be unbeatable.

In the past month, he has been tested and toughened by the Wright stuff and surmounted it. John McCain is facing a long, hard summer and fall.

The Wright Reason

If tonight's Indiana and North Carolina results keep Hillary Clinton's hopes alive, as they may well do, much of the blame will be heaped on Jeremiah Wright's outrageous performance of a week ago.

But Obama's inability to win over blue-collar white voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania predated that, and the nagging question is how much the Wright blight is an excuse rather than a reason for rejecting him. With all the hope Obama has aroused in younger and better-educated voters, how much counterbalancing fear has he been unable to quell in less secure segments of the electorate?

No amount of shirt-sleeved stumping in coffee shops, at gas stations and in union halls may be enough to dispel the sense of his "otherness" to voters who feel their security threatened by foreign competition and other outside forces. Will they trust their familiarity with the Clintons over the promises of an African-American not as well-known to them and with shady associations to boot.

If Obama falls short tonight, it may signify more than the embarrassment brought on by his former pastor and his tenuous ties to a former Weatherman.

As David Brook points out, the "contrast between combat and composure defines the Democratic race. The implicit Clinton argument is that politics is an inherently nasty business...You’d better elect a leader who can intimidate...

"Obama’s campaign grows out of the longstanding reform tradition. His implicit argument is that politics doesn’t have to be this way. Dishonesty and brutality aren’t inevitable; they’re what gets in the way."

The underlying irony is that voters' fears may be drawing them to Clinton's combativeness rather than Obama's promises of peaceful progress. If that turns out to be the case, it will be a sad reflection of what we failed to learn from the Bush years.

Obama's Anger and McCain's

Michelle Obama is telling voters about her husband's feelings during this long, hard battle for the nomination, his thinking that "I can't let my ego, my anger, my frustration get in the way of the ultimate goal."

Among the sad aspects of the past week has been Jeremiah Wright's usurping of any anger that Obama's might express. On Meet the Press today, the candidate responded to Tim Russert's grilling with unfailing calm and sadness in a situation where annoyance at being betrayed might be expected. But Obama has to distance himself from Wright's operatic anger.

Against the tactics of the Clinton and McCain campaigns, he has wryness and humor as an outlet, but there has been nothing funny about his former minister's antics.

By today's political rules, overt anger is unacceptable. "Give 'em hell, Harry" Truman would be an anachronism in a 21st century campaign.

In the post-nomination period, that will be a problem for John McCain as well. He will have to live down his reputation for a "quick temper and whether it might hinder him as president" that dates back to the 2000 campaign.

“He is passionate about the future of this country,” Cindy McCain recently told daytime TV viewers. “Some people mistake that for temper.”

McCain's anger-management technique was seen during the primaries in his addressing of Mitt Romney as "My friend" as he answered his slurs with gritted teeth.

In a matchup between Obama and McCain, temperament is sure to be an issue. An underlying question will be whether Obama has enough fire in him to be president and whether McCain has too much.

Praying for a Doubt-Based Presidency

"God wants me to be president," George W. Bush told fellow believers before 2000. If the rest of us had known His intentions, we would have started building an ark.

After eight years of war and political plague from this faith-based presidency, most voters may be ready for some rational doubt and ambivalence in the White House. Yet the candidates still seem mesmerized by Bush's breakdown between the separation of church and state.

After Barack Obama gaffed about "bitter" voters turning to God and guns, Hillary Clinton was quick to play the God card. “I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith,” she is telling Indiana voters. “The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling to’ religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

John McCain left it to a spokesman to do the piety pandering, decrying Obama's elitism and disrespect for "the American traditions that have contributed to the identity and greatness of this country."

Ironically, Obama may take his religion more seriously than either Clinton or McCain. What damaged him in the Jeremiah Wright affair was not rejecting his pastor quickly enough to suit otherwise pious voters who want a president with the "right" kind of religious belief.

In the century before Bush, politicians stopped having to "pour God over everything like ketchup," as Gore Vidal put it during John F. Kennedy's presidency.

JFK himself said it best: "I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office...

"I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none...and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation."

With that attitude, he couldn't get elected today.

Hurt

The politician was doing what he had to do, but Barack Obama's personal pain yesterday was palpable as he cut his ties to Jeremiah Wright.

“Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Obama said. “I don’t think that he showed much concern for me."

Behind the politician's voice was the anger and disappointment of a man who barely knew his own father but wrote a book about him, bearing a title inspired by a paternal figure who had now betrayed him.

Searching for substitute fathers has been common for a long time now in an era of mobility, psychological desertion and divorce. Throughout his life, Obama has found more than one, not only Wright and the disreputable Tony Rezko but, among others, two figures from the Kennedy era, Abner Mikva and Newt Minow, who helped and advised him along the way.

The Wright psychodrama, and how Obama handles it, will almost certainly be a turning point in this campaign and beyond. Yesterday he seemed dazed and hurt in making the break.

“The fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage for three or four consecutive days in the midst of this major debate is something that not only makes me angry, but also saddens me,” he said in dealing with his pain publicly.

The coming days will be a test of his capacity for recovery and renewal.

Rev. Wright's Publicity Blitz

More than anything, it's the smile. Is it benign, beatific, self-satisfied or all of the above? As the Rev. Wright, with the help of the media he excoriates, does inestimable damage to Barack Obama's campaign, the smile tells more than his words do. The preacher is center stage.

In 1960, when John F. Kennedy assured voters that, as the first Catholic president, he would not be taking instruction from the Vatican, neither the Pope nor the Archbishop of his diocese held press conferences to contradict him.

Obama has not been so lucky. Rev. Wright feels compelled to correct the image of him spread by YouTube, which he interpreted today as "an attack on the black church."

Moreover, Wright recalled to the National Press Club today that he told Obama last year, "If you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people."

Unlike JFK, Obama will have to deal with questions about his religion until voters go to the ballot box.

His response today is a sample of what's to come. At a tarmac press conference, Obama told reporters, “He’s obviously free to speak his mind, but I just want to emphasize that this is my former pastor. Many of the statements that he has made both to trigger this initial controversy and that he’s made over the last several days are not statements that I’ve heard him make previously. They don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about.”

But that won't wipe the smile off the Rev. Wright's face.

Laughing It Off

As David Brooks blogs that "issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall," Gail Collins, bless her, provides the best tonic for the general dismay about last night's debate.

In her New York Times column, she writes:

"I know it’s been a hard couple of weeks, people. You were all excited about this election and now you feel like someone who got all dressed up for a great event and wound up at a B-list party with a cash bar. You never want to hear the words 'bitter' or 'Bosnia' again. And the only political story that you’ve really enjoyed lately is the one about Cindy McCain’s list of favorite recipes being cribbed from The Food Network...

"The problem with primaries is that without real policy disagreements, if you want to prove you’re better than your opponent it has to get personal. Barack and Hillary are dying to take on John McCain. They can’t wait to fight with somebody who thinks Iraq is a good idea.

"In a great debate breakthrough, Hillary said she thought that while she was the best candidate, Barack could beat the Republicans, too: 'Yes, yes, yes.' This is definitely a new conclusion on the part of the Clinton campaign, arrived at under extreme duress and the presence of network TV cameras, but the Democrats can use all the amity they can get.

"Five more days and then it’s on to the next primary. Let’s try not to say anything insulting about Guam."

And stay away from networks that treat a presidential campaign as a grade-school food fight.