Todd Gitlin argues this campaign to make Obama seem un-American (now that should be familiar) is the campaign the Reps would have made whether he or Clinton were to be the Dem candidate.
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"Let People Draw Their Own Conclusions"
By Todd Gitlin - March 19, 2008, 10:02PM
How long a shot was it that we could finally have an election that didn't turn intto a referendum on the Sixties? Very long.
And so, just as the Democrats seem to be launched toward the inevitable, here come the fusillades from the Swift Boaters, fully equipped with Rev. Wrong videos that arrived in the nick of time to confound Democrats, leave Obama chastened (or so he appeared in Fayetteville today as he addressed the Iraq catastrophe) and not least, to lift the hearts of Republicans. Politico reports how thrilled they are at the prospect of running against Obama's blathering father-surrogate, his flagless lapel, his wife's belated discovery of American pride, and assorted attendant baggage. The slash-and-burn commercials write themselves:
“It’s harder for people to say it’s taken out of context because these are Wright’s own words,” noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry that employed the use of their target’s own language when he returned from Vietnam and returned his medals. “You let people draw their own conclusions.”
“You don’t have to say that he’s unpatriotic; you don’t question his patriotism,” he added.
“Because I guaran-damn-tee you that, with that footage, you don’t have to say it.”
The lineaments of the McCain campaign then write themselves straight from the Atwater-Rove playbook: McCain feigns the high road--Rev. Wright? Americans know he's obviously wrong for America but I have no comment on anyone who chose to sit at his feet--while the packs who accompany him turn Wright into a Swift Boat commander named Willie Horton.
We get another inkling of the double-barreled, double-coded campaign to come in a McCain direct mail fundraiser reported today by the alert Spencer Ackerman. It begins:
"My Friends,
"I am not running for president to be somebody, but to serve our country with honor.
The mailing doesn't come right out and say, Barack Obama looks an awful lot like that fellow who used to run for president saying "I am somebody". It's double-coded. It says: I am somebody already: Teddy Roosevelt. I am not becoming, I am being. I am not aspirational, I am accomplished. And it also sounds this vague echo to tickle the memories of anyone who remembers 1988: Obama is striving to prove he's someone he's not. And in fact he is already somebody else: that other wild-eyed preacher somebody, the Rev. Jesse.
Maybe the copywriter thought this, maybe half-thought it, maybe didn't think it all--didn't have to think it. The political-mythic unconscious does all the work.
There's be lots more of this coming. It will come with annoying reminders that Obama offered no evidence that he ever, in all the years Wright inspired him, felt inspired to challenge his spiritual father. (Ed Koch sounded this theme on NY1 last night.) Clinton supporters are already accusing Obama of sleight-of-hand. Some of those who were impressed, even dazzled, by his Philadelphia performance will keep trying to tie him to heavy, heavy Wright. It's one thing for Obama to declare that America is not perfect, that he is "an imperfect vessel" and his campaign "imperfect" as well. It's another for him to convince the unconvinced that his imperfections are baggage worth carrying.
It was always going to come to this in a McCain campaign. It will come to the equivalent winks and smears if his opponent is Hillary Clinton. Obama and Wright, meet Clinton and Saul Alinsky, her senior thesis subject; Clinton and Bob Truehaft, the Communist lawyer she once worked for; Clinton and Susan Rosenberg, the Weather Undergrounder pardoned by her husband. It isn't that Obama has nothing to answer for. It's that one way or the other, the Republican story will turn out the same: My Opponent Is Un-American.
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