Vote Right, Vote White
Vote McCain, Not Osama or Hussein
Those are the texts of two homemade signs, pictures of which, taken in Pennsylvania, appear in a piece by Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post entitled, as is this diary, McCain's Chilling Dance With the Dark Side. In the piece Capehart explores the implications of the kind of campaign that McCain is now running, beginning with noting how the campaigns is now trying to raise questions about a man who has been a national figure for 4 years and actively campaigning for the better part of two. He writes of the campaign,
They seem to have no qualms appealing to the cultural fears of their agitated, and now energized, base by practically branding Obama as un-American or anti-American. And this is eliciting an ugliness at McCain-Palin events that is justifiably raising alarms that some nut job is going to act on the Republican ticket's cynical campaigning.
Let me explore further, including some thoughts of my own.
Capehart reminds us of some of the well-known screams by McCain-Palin supporters at recent rallies: terrorist" and "Kill him!" and "treason." He notes the the candidates not rejecting such language, and reminds us this is not new, pointing us at the famous tape where McCain simply laughed when one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton "the bitch." Then after exploring the two signs with which I began, Capehart puts it as simply as it can be put:
We've seen the destructive power of words.
From this Capehart reminds us of some of what motivated Timothy McVeigh, including rhetoric common on the far right of the Republican party about black helicopters.
You can read what Capehart has to say about that, and his response to the most recent column by Charles Krauthammer. I want to explore just a bit the key idea I have just noted: We've seen the destructive power of words.
Words matter. During the primary season the Clinton campaign tried to belittle Obama for his words. They attacked him for "plagiarizing" from Deval Patrick. Senator Clinton talked about her experience and that of McCain while deriding Sen. Obama as having only a speech he had given two years ago. His powerful verbal presentations were dismissed as only words.
But words can serve as tools for motivation or discouragement. A speech can motivate towards hope and positive action, or towards despair and destructiveness. Words of anger and violence that go unchallenged are assumed to have the blessing of those who hear them yet do not respond.
I once knew a man who was eventually deported because he had lied during his immigration to the United States about belonging to a Nazi sympathizing group in Romania. That was sufficient grounds. Many called him a war criminal. The action for which they affixed that label was a fiery speech he gave, after which members of the organization, the Iron Guard, and others in the crowd went on a rampage against Jews, including hanging some still alive on meathooks in an abbatoir. Did he specifically advocate such violence? He claims not, and the contemporaneous records do not disprove his position. But was he responsible? He again claimed not, and it was there that I disagreed with him, forcefully, to his face. Absent his fiery words as a spark, the fuel of anger and antisemitism already present in the massed crowd listening might well not have exploded. We cannot know for sure, but surely we can see a connection between his words and the subsequent action.
Returning to Capehart, he thinks it is legitimate to explore the connections candidates have had with questionable people, and includes not only Ayers and Rezko and Wright but also Gordon Liddy, and quotes McCain from a 2007 appearance on the latter's radio show in which he praises his host. Capehart then writes:
The candidates' associations with these people, and their responses to questions about them, give you a view into their judgment. But at a time of great economic uncertainty -- so uncertain that the smartest people in the world are scratching their heads about what to do -- whipping up anger rather than reaching for solutions is not what's needed.
whipping up anger - that is an old approach, one that certainly predates Karl Rove's appearance on our political scene. We should remember that the use of anger against those seen as "other" has been an unfortunate part of American history. Such anger was used to justify hanging Mary Dyer and other Quakers on Boston Common during the Puritan rule of Massachusetts. It led to the many justifications of slaughtering the First Peoples of this continent, starting in 17h Century New England. We were so afraid of the power of words that legislators and courts willing supported suppression and criminalization of speech of those who advocated for labor unions, criticized the government, spoke out against wars - remember, our first attempt under the Constitution were the Alien and Sedition Acts under Adams, passed into law in 1798 less than a decade after the Constitution went into effect.
And lest we forget, we saw the ugliness of the Civil Rights era, and that was proceeded by our legalized discrimination against those of Japanese background in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. And even now one who is Arab, or Muslim, or perceived to be either, is at risk - look what has happened to mosques, to people who speak out on behalf of Arabs, things we have read about here and elsewhere recently, but unfortunately without the widespread coverage in the traditional media necessary to bring our nation to its senses.
Capehart notes Krauthammer's questioning of Obama's character as being "highly suspect." I'm sorry that he does not say what should be said about that: Krauthammer knows the power of words: after all, he did win a Pulitzer and he makes a great deal of money from his use of words. And he certainly understands the impact of words, given his training as a psychiatrist. And perhaps someone should remind him that Radovan Karadzic was also a psychiatrist. I am not saying that Krauthammer's actions approach those of a man rightly described as a war criminal for his actions beyond his words, but one bears responsibility for the words one offers, as surely Krauthammer knows.
But Charles Krauthammer is of small matter, except for the breadth of the nation reached by his words in his column and his appearances on television. Instead we should note the pivot Capehart makes using Krauthammer's distinction between temperament and character:
This past week, by ginning up an anger and resentment on the campaign trail that should leave all with a cold chill running through their bodies, McCain has shown neither presidential temperament nor character.
For some of us who have watched McCain for years, we are not surprised that others may now come to such a conclusion. I am mildly bemused that others did not reach such a conclusion years ago, and I base that only on his record since he was first elected to the House. It is not an argument expect Obama to make directly. It is far better that Joe Biden, who has considered McCain a friend of more than three decades, be the one to raise those concerns, and those about judgment, as he did so powerfully in his speech in Scranton yesterday.
Capehart ends his piece by offering a quote made by a top McCain strategist as it appeared in the New York Daily News, and then concluding with a one sentence rejoinder of his own:
It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice. If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
If they keep doing what they're doing, they'll deserve to lose.
Capehart is right: they'll deserve to lose. But that is insufficient, because they will have seriously damaged the polity of this nation. And for that reason alone, every sensible person and every political commentator should be challenging the McCain-Palin campaign for how in the desperate attempt to win what has increasingly become an unwinnable race they have been willing to destroy our comity, to divide us on race, and religion, and fear. It is insufficient that they are experiencing a backlash, as is indicated in the just released poll from the Post and ABC.
They will deserve to lose, and they will. And they will have earned our complete condemnation, and destroyed whatever honor and respect to which they may previously have had some claim (and in the case of operatives like Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt, I'm not sure they were entitled to any respect or acknowledgment of honor).
We cannot merely point out how destructive to their own chances the approach they are taking is. We need to challenge them on their destructiveness. We need to make clear that political campaigns do not justify this kind of destructiveness, not if we are going to have a nation and a society that is governable, that can come together to address the really serious issues that confront us.
McCain's dance IS chilling - on that Capehart is absolutely correct. And the use of the term "Dark Side"inevitably brings to my mind the voice of Darth Vader urging Luke Skywalker to stop resisting, to come over to the Dark Side of The Force. That Dark Side is all-encompassing, completely devouring those who dance with it. Once you embrace it, it will strive to keep you in its grasp. And that has consequences beyond any immediate campaign - for one's honor and self-respect to be sure, but for the nation one seeks to lead.
We should be careful that our side, even as we are forceful in rejecting the slurs offered by McCain-Palin, not descend to such a level. For now we have the high ground: Obama and Biden are perceived as being far less negative. We will win, but we need to win with as broad a connection with the American people as possible. As we reject the kinds of tactics used by the other side, we should be certain that we denounce them when done by our supporters.
But Capehart is right -
If they keep doing what they're doing, they'll deserve to lose.
They deserve to lose because they offer no solutions to the American people because they are tied to the failed policies of the past 8 years.
But even if they weren't so tied, they would deserve to lose because of how they are disrespecting the American people and our nation, appealing not to the better angels of our nature, but to our fears. FDR told us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Those who instead stoke fear demonstrate their smallness, their lack of vision, and as a recent president once reminded us, where there is no vision the people perish. We cannot afford that, not now, not ever. And our vision should be inclusive, and hopeful.
Which is why Obama and Biden will win. Why for our sake, and that of our nation, they must win. Or else the words spoken by LBJ in "Daisy" will surely become true:
we must learn to love each other, or we must die
Peace.