Race in the Race

Novelist Khaled Hosseini's opinion column in this morning's Washington Post raises a terrifying and sickening issue that has been present in the back of voter's minds throughout this campaign - the safety of Barack Obama as the first African American presidential candidate.

John McCain's taking the microphone at a rally last night and weakly trying to diffuse the mob's angry calls about Obama by saying that 'Senator Obama is a decent man,' makes me wonder if the McCain handlers finally realize that an actual physical attack on Obama might bring accusations that McCain and Palin's staged events have constituted incitement to violence. At McCain/Palin rallies we have seen their introducer's, and they themselves, raising questions about 'who really is this Barack Hussein Obama?.' This has been answered with calls of 'terrorist' and even 'kill him.'

There have been dirty campaigns before. Both Bush's have plenty of egg on their faces for engaging in some low behavior and McCain himself knows how low George W. was willing to stoop, and now McCain had ruined his own record as a beloved maverick. This is part of the heritage of American politics. Even my hero Abraham Lincoln was known to have written anonymously published editorials in friendly newspapers. His secretary, John Hay, did this for him also.

I guess I'm plugging today's Washington Post. Well worth reading in this same issue is the article by Harold Ford Jr. who talks from first hand experience of what it's like to be smeared. As an Illinois legislator Lincoln was known to have so bitterly attacked an opponent that he reduced the poor man to tears on the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives, back when the state capitol was still in Vandalia. But Lincoln left a record of honor and compassion even toward former Southern insurrectionists at the end of the war.

We've all heard "If you can't stand the heat..." but there have to be some limits to how far those seeking office can go, and McCain and Palin, to my way have thinking have joined hands and skipped way over the line.