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He's partying like it's 1992

An update of the Clinton-in-Moscow innuendo




Same innuendo tactics, different era. John McCain's last-ditch bid to paint Barack Obama as an insufficiently patriotic American who pals around with bad guys is eerily reminiscent of what happened back in 1992 – when President George H. W. Bush, teetering on the brink of defeat, sought to paint Bill Clinton as an insufficiently patriotic American who palled around with bad guys.

In the wake of McCain's attempts this week to link Obama with '60s Weatherman bomber Bill Ayres, it's helpful to have some historical perspective and recognize that when Republican presidential candidates are feeling most desperate, they tend to ratchet up the character attacks and wrap themselves ever tighter in the American flag. It's a party thing.

McCain is trying to impugn his opponent's character and patriotism by insinuating that there is something sinister about Obama's dealings with Ayres, a University of Illinois professor who was named citizen of the year in Chicago 11 years ago. Obama and Ayres served together (and with others) on a charitable board and worked together (and with others) on an education project. At a rally yesterday, McCain said that "we need to know the full extent of the relationship" in order to know whether Obama "is telling the truth to the American people or not."

Now flash back to October 8, 1992 – nearly 16 years to the day, no less – and consider the innuendos voiced by the senior President Bush on Larry King's CNN show. Seeking to stave off defeat, he fired his presumed magic bullet: Bill Clinton, as a Rhodes Scholar student way back in 1970, had toured a number of foreign capitals, including…Moscow. Communist Moscow.

Clinton had already acknowledged the five-day Moscow visit (part of a 40-day European tour), had said that he was "just a tourist," and said he hadn't met with anyone memorable. Bush's surrogates weren't satisifed with his explanation; they spread the word (via the pre-Internet rumor network) that Clinton may have been a dupe of the KGB, or worse. Bush also decided that he could get some mileage from the Moscow visit.

In light of what McCain is saying today about Obama-Ayres, see if any of this sounds familiar: Bush told King that Clinton needed to "level with the American people…I don't want to tell you what I really think, because I don't have the facts. But to go to Moscow one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, not remember what you saw? I really think the answer is, level with the American people…I don't have (the visit) as a federal case. I am just concerned about it . It's a pattern here."

Bush's tactic was promptly ridiculed on Saturday Night Live. In a debate skit, the Clinton character 'fessed up to all the darkest Republican fantasies: "Yes, I did go to Moscow by train. And while on that train, I struck up a conversation with a man in the seat next to me. He gave me a package to take to Moscow and instructed me to leave it folded in a newspaper in a kiosk across from Lenin's tomb. I've explained this many times. Yes, the KGB did subsequently pay my way through law school, but that was the last contact I had with the KGB until years later when Hillary and I were having problems, and it was a KGB agent who let me stay at his place for a while until we patched things up."

Bush dropped the tactic within days; an aide told the press that the effort had "backfired" and "bombed." (And no wonder. In the year that Clinton had visited Moscow, 40,000 other Americans had done the same.) Thereafter, Bush contented himself with the charge that the insufficiently patriotic Clinton had helped organize an anti-Vietnam war protest in London.

But Bush's autumn '92 tactics failed because the fundamentals of that campaign season (notably, a perceived flagging economy) worked against him; voters simply ignored his anti-Clinton attacks because they were anxious to make a change.

The same dynamic seems to be working against McCain. As evidenced by the polls this week, McCain and his surrogates have gotten zero traction from the Ayres linkage. The dire economic news apparently has prompted most voters to focus on their futures, rather than worry about whether Obama had full knowledge of the dire deeds Ayres committed back when the candidate was a child.

The federal prosecutor who pursued the Weathermen back in the '70s doesn't appear to be worried, either. In a letter published today in The New York Times, William Ibershoff writes: "I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayres' terrorist activities…I am very pleased to learn that (Ayres) has become a responsible citizen."

McCain has clearly reached the point where he feels compelled to hurl everything at the wall, just to see what might stick. Some charges are legit, of course. McCain could accurately point out that a fraction of Obama's prodigious haul comes from fictitious donors with fake names and addresses. McCain could also legitimately point out that the election officials in Indiana are questioning thousands of voter registration signatures gathered by the organizers at ACORN.

But those are not the kinds of complaints that typically move millions of voters. Hence, the last-ditch bid to fire a magic bullet, by reprising the senior Bush '92 tactic. A new McCain TV attack ad was launched against Obama today ("When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayres"), thus paralleling the Republican National Committee TV ads now on the air in Wisconsin and Indiana.

Perhaps McCain can ultimately sow doubts and fears, perhaps not. (The fact that the GOP, at this late date, feels compelled to run anti-Obama ads in red-state Indiana is clearly a sign of weakness.) But what's beyond dispute is that, by adopting the standard smear tactics of Republicans on the cusp of defeat, McCain has renewed his Faustian pact with the party establishment and forfeited anew any claim to the crown of "maverick." As former Republican governor William Milliken of Michigan said yesterday, "He is not the McCain I endorsed."