Posted on Tue, Oct. 14, 2008
John McCain is no George Wallace. But John McCain may be desperate.
How else do you explain McCain's having let his campaign wander down roads that have raised comparisons to a dead bigot whose very name is synonymous with racist politics?
This is the same McCain who lost the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina in part because he criticized, then waffled, on the appropriateness of flying the Confederate flag over the state Capitol.
Eight years ago, McCain blamed then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush's campaign for stoking up resentment among those South Carolinians who saw the Stars and Bars as part of their proud heritage.
But in 2008, it is McCain's campaign whose inflammatory rhetoric has spurred some supporters at his rallies to scream "off with his head" and other invective whenever Barack Obama is mentioned.
McCain's Democratic rival has been called a "traitor," "terrorist" and "liar" at McCain rallies. A Christian, Obama is derisively called a Muslim. The son of an American mother and a Nigerian father, he is called an Arab.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), whom McCain in August called one of the three wisest people he knew, said McCain must share responsibility for the biased attitudes that propel these mischaracterizations.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks on innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," Lewis said.
The congressman, who was beaten more than once by racists during the 1960s civil rights movement, later said he didn't mean to imply a direct connection between Wallace and McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, but he wanted to remind "all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior."
McCain seemed to take the message to heart. He personally tried to calm the more vociferous Obama attackers at one of his events. But McCain also was still airing TV ads that said of Obama: "When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers . . . When discovered, he lied."
So why has McCain drifted from an issues-oriented campaign? The answer is in the polls. Even in the Solid South, McCain is faltering. Virginia and North Carolina look vulnerable. And in Southern states where McCain may win, the Obama tide may sweep victory from Republicans in other races on the ballot.
That has the party very worried, and it has McCain acting desperate. So much so that his campaign of late has appealed not to reason but to emotions, emotions rooted in fear. That's the way many elections were won in America's past. But this election must be about the future.
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