After countless failed attempts to define Barack Obama in some kind -- any kind -- of negative light, the McCain campaign has come up with a new one. After Obama's triumphant "grand tour" of the middle and his obvious popluarity in Europe, McCain's handlers have decided that Obama is acting inappropriately presidential. We wouldn't what a president candidate to act presidential, would we?
So the McCain campaign has not very subtly decided to push this meme by calling Obama presumptuous. McCain's campaign is, of course, being aided and abetted by the always cooperative (so called liberal) media. This time the "liberal" Washing Post columnist Dana Milbank is leading the charge. Here's the first paragraph of his July 30 column:
Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.
That's a good one, Dana. Really clever.
And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The Obama is presumptious theme is so good that McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis sent out an e-mail to all "interested parties" with the subject line Barack Obama's Celebrity. It quotes Milbank's "presumptuous" statement and pumps it up a notch by referring to "Barack Obama's presumptuous arrogance".
I predict we'll be hearing the word presumptuous a lot in the next few days -- and much longer if the McCain campaign, with the help of its media enablers, can get it to stick. In fact, it's pretty much a perfect Republican campaign theme because it not only accuses Barack Obama of being something presumably bad that no one can prove or, more importantly, disprove; it blows the kind of racist dog whistle that Republican love to use against African American Democrats.
Dog whistle politics is a key component of the infamous Republican Southern Strategy that has been responsible for the election of all Republican presidents since Nixon. So it's inevitable that the McCain campaign has rolled it out again against the biggest target ever, Barack Obama. The temptation is just irresistible.
In this case the dog whistle is that Obama is being presumptuous. To most Americans presumptuous means, well, presumptuous. But if you check your thesaurus you'll find that a synonym for presumptuous is uppity. You know, uppity as in uppity n*****. This connection will not be lost on the racists among us. They will chuckle to themselves about the clever way the McCain campaign and their media enablers are calling Obama uppity without actually using the word.
And of course to them it's so obvious that Obama is being uppity. After all, what could be more uppity than a African American candidate acting presidential even before he's elected president? Maybe an African American actually being president?