I am really sick and tired of the McCain campaign and their nonstop whining. The latest is their attacks on VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill because she has written a book called, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama", that somehow she is "in the tank" for Obama. They feign ignorance on what the book is about, that they didn't know about it before, and that it is so unfair. Well, not only does the Google show that she made it no secret that she was releasing this book, but I am offering even more pertinent information: she wrote an article in Time magazine on the exact same topic, clearly a teaser for her book. It was dated .... August 21, 2008, giving the McCain campaign plenty of time to digest her thoughts. Read excerpts below the fold which will once and for all debunk this absurd attack.
The title of her article in Time actually downplays Obama: "Nothing Unique About It". The central thesis of her article, and presumably her book, is that Barack Obama is merely one of many upcoming African American leaders who are part of the post-Civil Rights era.
The first time I ever used the term post--civil rights to describe the new generation of African-American politicians I was studying, the Rev. Joseph Lowery hollered at me. He wanted to know, What in the devil does that mean?
She then goes on to discuss what leaders in the civil rights era did, and that their protests laid the path for this new generation of African American leaders.
Obama's rise has demonstrated so far that a lot of that protest worked, and this latest wave of black politicians is living, breathing evidence of it. Only one generation removed from the protests their parents led, many are Ivy League graduates in their 30s, 40s and 50s who remember the 1960s--and even the 1970s--only from old video and the printed page.
But Obama is just one member of a generation of political leaders faced with a new task: honoring the contributions of their forebears without alienating the broader, multiracial audiences they need to win. I've spent part of the past year tracking dozens of these rising stars and have concluded that anyone who thinks Obama is unique is not paying attention. Consider Newark, N.J., mayor Cory Booker. His troubled city is into its third generation of African-American political leadership but not necessarily the good kind. Its previous two black mayors--Kenneth Gibson and Sharpe James--became ensnared in fraud and corruption prosecutions (Gibson was ultimately acquitted; James was not). Booker, 39, is something else entirely. A child of the New Jersey suburbs and a graduate of Stanford and Oxford, he faces an uphill battle in transforming Newark's troubled urban landscape.
She devotes the article to other black leaders, and specifically not to Obama. Obama is the mere figurehead to a larger phenomenon in the African American community. It is not an advocacy for Obama, just that the trend that he represents means a new era.
The Obama generation is just beginning its run. South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers is so young that when the picture on his office wall of him posing with Jesse Jackson was taken in 1988, Sellers was just 4 years old. Now 23, he is the son of Cleveland Sellers, who was jailed for his role protesting South Carolina's infamous Orangeburg massacre, and is an ardent Obama supporter. Sellers arrived at the state capitol last year and is still studying for the bar, but he is already eyeing statewide office. If he wanted to follow Obama's lead, Sellers would not be eligible to run for President until 2020. For now, it's enough that, just as Jackson drained some of the shock from the idea of electing a black President 20 years ago, Obama's 2008 may take us--if not past civil rights--at least to another level of the debate.
Finally, look how she is described at the end of the article:
Ifill is the host of Washington Week on PBS, a senior correspondent for the NewsHour and the author of the forthcoming The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama
One could argue that such a topic would interest anyone across the political spectrum, because it is bigger than one political party. African Americans are largely now Democrats but that wasn't always the case, and it may not always be the case in the future. This book is about history, not candidate advocacy. It sounds like it is going to be an interesting read.
But as to how Gwen Ifill will moderate the debate tomorrow, a better bet for whiny Republicans would be to peruse the archives of Washington Week and the News Hour, as well as her past forays as a moderator of presidential debates. If they had an ounce of integrity (okay, not possible, but for the sake of argument), they would be forced to admit that she is a pretty straight down the middle journalist, equally infuriating to both Democrats and Republicans. I can tell you, she is not my favorite journalist because of the way she equivocates things that are not equivalent in my view. But I am okay with her moderating, since both sides agreed to it. Fair is fair.