No, ichy....honesty. Read this. It gets it right...So what if he has Jewish antecedents. So do lots of people...but the reaction to a simple question!! And isn't this statement he made dishonest?..."Allen:--with a little Spanish blood in her. And I was raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian. But if you really need to get into such matters--"
And Clinton did not have sex with that woman, either. Clinton had lousy character...it showed. Maybe Allen does too.
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Allen's Gaffes Show a Thin Skin, Mean Spirit: Margaret Carlson
By Margaret Carlson
Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Senator George Allen is on edge, and it showed this week at his second debate in as many days. His bid to be re-elected senator from Virginia was supposed to be a walk, an annoying interlude on his way to a run at the presidency.
Now with former Navy Secretary James Webb nipping at his heels, the Republican senator touted as the heir to Reagan's conservatism with a happy face looks like the sad side of the Raggedy Andy doll.
What made him lose his cool most recently was a question asked at a candidates' forum on Monday. Fresh from a mild knockabout in a debate against Webb on ``Meet the Press'' the day before, Allen walked into the friendliest of forums, the Chamber of Commerce in suburban Virginia, to warm applause. But before he could score any points, Allen snapped.
Reporter Peggy Fox of WUSA-TV, asked whether any of his ancestors were Jewish. Rather than answer yes, he took after Fox, scolding her for ``making aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs.'' Such discussions, he said, have no place in politics.
Allen and his party have made religion central to their politics, from refusing to allow federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research and withholding approval for the morning-after pill to holding up the Senate while the fate of Terri Schiavo was debated. Allen subscribes to an agenda dictated by the Christian Coalition, which gives him a 100 percent rating. He spoke at Pat Robertson's Regent University in 2005, the day after the reverend said liberal judges were more dangerous to society than a bunch of bearded terrorists.
Honesty, That's All
As the audience booed the reporter -- a politician will always win any such confrontation -- Allen asked why she was asking such a question. ``Honesty,'' Fox replied. ``That's all.'' Allen retorted, ``That's all. Oh, that's all?''
At best, Allen looked like a bully; at worst, like he has a mean streak. It popped out once before when Allen singled out for ridicule a Webb campaign worker, a dark face in a sea of white ones, calling him ``macaca,'' a term taken as a racial slur.
Not wanting to let this meltdown last as long as the ``macaca'' one, Allen's campaign issued a correction the next day. Allen said, ``I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line's Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed.''
Just One Correction
So why would he treat the reporter as if she'd insulted him by ``making aspersions'' with her question? The information has been out there a long time. When asked about his grandfather in 2000, Allen told the Richmond Times-Dispatch his relative was put in a concentration camp because he was an Allied sympathizer.
Charlottesville Daily Progress columnist Bob Gibson told the New Republic that the only time Allen demanded a correction in his 27 years of writing about him was when he wrote of Allen's Jewish roots.
Oddly enough, it was Allen's campaign that early on accused Webb of anti-Semitism for a pamphlet he sent out during his Democratic primary election fight against lobbyist Harris Miller, who had raised huge sums of money, showing him with dollar bills sticking out of his pockets.
There's precedent for learning late in life that you have Jewish ancestors. Wesley Clark, John Kerry and Madeleine Albright have all been surprised by the news. None of them got angry at the suggestion.
Iraq, Anyone?
Does any of this amount to a whole hill of beans in this tense and troubled world of ours? The candidates have sharp disagreements on the issues, especially on the war in Iraq. Webb changed parties to oppose the war, while Allen wholeheartedly supports it, saying he would have done so even knowing what he knows now.
But character does count, if we are lucky enough to get a glimpse of it in a modern campaign designed to keep it under wraps. As much as paid advertising obscures who a candidate really is, actual campaigning -- visits to diners, pancake breakfasts and the debates themselves -- unveils it.
It's never so much a gaffe itself that hobbles a candidate but his reaction, and whether it taps into other things we know about him. It is Allen's lingering love for all things Confederate, including its flag, a noose he kept in his office, and his vote against a Martin Luther King holiday, that gave the ``macaca'' comment its resonance.
In back-to-back episodes, Allen has revealed two things about himself. First, under pressure he's petulant and thin- skinned. If he retains any presidential aspirations --- and it's hard to find a Republican who hasn't crossed him off the list -- that will count against him. The second is an attitude toward race and ethnicity that ought to count against him in Virginia, even though those same Republicans say it won't.
It underestimates Virginians to think a majority are comfortable with Allen's unsettling reactions under pressure. As anyone knows who has seen the bumper stickers, Virginia is not for haters. |
