The rail-splitter in 2008...

Today The New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for President. The editorial was thorough, workmanlike and unequivocal. But of equal interest today is the editorial in which The New York Times endorsed Abraham Lincoln for President in 1860. Without seeing any of the eventual greatness in the man, the editorial was a bit condescending in tone – but summed up its appreciation of Lincoln by describing, tongue-in-cheek, the habits of mind of a “rail splitter” (which is how Lincoln’s campaigners described him, referring to one of his first jobs as a young man). The Times said this about the man from Illinois:

“Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the hot and angry passions of the heart…It teaches a man to strike heavy blows, and to plant them just where they are needed – but he learns, also, to deal them only when they are needed. A skillful professor of this science will not be likely to go around splitting things in general – putting a wedge into every crack he sees and driving it home merely for the love of the thing. He has an eye to utility. It is only when things have fallen into decay a little – when the fences are down and the cattle and swine wandering into forbidden territory, rooting up useful crops and doing more harm in a day than a careful farmer can remedy in a week, that he splits rails to repair the breach and fence in the troublesome brutes.” It would have been hard to give a clearer assessment of how Lincoln actually governed in the ensuing years, navigating the country through the worst crisis of its history.

Today The New York Times said that “leading America forward will require…sober judgment and a cool, steady hand. Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance.” In contrast, during the week last month when the Congress at first rejected the financial crisis bail-out package and John McCain suspended his campaign and rushed to Washington, USA Today editorialized: “The Republican candidate's erratic performance this week was far from reassuring.”

But fortunately there is a rail-splitter available again…

What the Election Has Come Down To...

If we take seriously the language of presidential candidates and their running mates, then what the outcome of this election has come down to -- according to John McCain -- is whether a majority of white Americans in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Missouri is prepared to believe his campaign's insinuations that Barack Obama is (a) a terrorist, or at least the friend of terrorists, (b) a "socialist", (c) a racist, because he hasn't disavowed his friend Rep. John Lewis's criticism of racist language used by people who go to McCain and Palin rallies, and (d) a Muslim. None of these claims and insinuations are true, although the first three are subtly or directly interwoven into McCain's and especially Palin's remarks at campaign rallies, as well as illustrated in sinister, shadowy television ads. That some of their supporters have absorbed and begun to regurgitate these lines is readily apparent: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/10/note-to-palin-crowd-your-roots-
are.html

That video was broadcast worldwide on Al Jazeera, and it's a perfect example of what Colin Powell was talking about on "Meet the Press" last Sunday: That the words and images of some Americans' prejudice against Muslims and people of color are "killing us" around the world -- meaning that a big chunk of our political discourse is reinforcing the image of America as a mean-spirited, religiously antagonistic and racially bigoted nation of people which has, by the way, dumped the world into an economic crisis caused by our egregiously leveraged credit practices.

The final round of campaign rhetoric on which Senator McCain and Governor Palin are now embarked is rife with these images and themes of race, violence and radicalism. They are attempting to win an election based on making less well-educated, undecided white voters afraid of a black man who is a former University of Chicago constitutional law professor distrusted by the left-wing of his own party because it suspects he is too moderate. Inasmuch as many privileged political pundits who have known McCain well for many years say that he is a swell guy who would never really think these odious things about an opponent, then the intellectual premise of his campaign, at its 11th hour, is based on hypocrisy and cynicism. His strategy has come down to pandering to the worst residual forms of intolerance in order to try to eke out a plurality in a handful of socially conservative states that, in a close election, might theoretically be enough to give him a victory in the Electoral College -- an antiquated, undemocratic mechanism for electing a president -- although most pollsters now expect that Barack Obama will win a substantial popular vote victory. If this were to occur, the world would see that the United States had elected a president based not on "the better angels of our nature" but instead on our worst instincts. It would have every right to dismiss our pretensions to promote civil society and democratic principles elsewhere in the world.

We are better than that.

McCain and Palin call Obama's ideas "socialist"

The intellectual progenitor of most modern socialist parties was Karl Marx, whose philosophy was broad, ramshackle but ruthless. You could plow through thousands of pages of his writings without finding a single idea for government that would work in 21st century America or be happily embraced by many Democrats. But you don't have to do that research, to prove that Barack Obama isn't a socialist. Strip away all the ornate antechambers and upper stories of Marx's ideological palace -- which when imposed on modern nations always leads to their decline -- and you find one elemental, insistent idea: The state should own the means of production, all of them. Meaning that except for Korean laundries and unlicensed plumbers, the state should own every damn productive unit in the economy. No American presidential candidate has ever subscribed to that idea, least of all the unexcitable, distinctly unradical Barack Obama. So the McCain-Palin flaming steak of rhetoric about Obama being a socialist is just another piece of Flying Wallendas exaggeration. It's a lie if they know what socialism actually is, and if they don't, then it's clear they're at the stage of the campaign where they will say anything that might generate a headline which two or three voters will actually believe, while simultaneously driving their "base" absolutely hysterical with fear and hatred. That won't only create a long hang-over for the conservative faithful. In an age of political polarization and partisan animosities, it's irresponsible.

The perversity of the McCain-Palin attacks on Obama

Whether intentional or unintentional, there's a perverse psychology behind the false allegations about Barack Obama made in recent days by John McCain and Sarah Palin, in public speeches as well as television ads. They've accused Obama of friendship with a terrorist, on the basis of his having been present at a few fundraisers and foundation board meetings with William Ayers, who'd been in the domestic revolutionary group Weathermen almost 40 years ago but is now a respected member of the Chicago educational community. In return, McCain-Palin supporters at rallies have shouted "kill him" (meaning Obama) and have expressed fear about Obama being a Muslim (which he is not). Considered together and in the context of American history, the content of McCain's sinister-looking ads and Palin's exaggerated remarks in fact are tantamount to an incitement to hatred, and potentially an incitement to violence.

Claiming that Obama is "not who he claims to be" cues many fundamentalist Christians to believe that Obama is a Muslim (since many of them already believe that Muslims are barbaric). Insinuating to entirely white audiences that Obama's identity is ambiguous ("Who is he really?") can easily tap racial uneasiness from those who harbor such feelings. Claiming that Obama consorted with a terrorist amalgamates what has already been encouraged -- fear of a black presidential candidate -- with many white Americans' long-standing bias or resentment toward blacks generally, and combines that with fear of terrorists. This in turn blends the historically toxic prejudice against African-Americans with the new fear and loathing of foreign enemies like Osama bin Laden.

Similar combinations of false beliefs, when summoned by self-serving, unprincipled politicians before in American history, have led to social upheaval, riots and killing. However indirectly, by encouraging people to sip this lethal cocktail of prejudice and fear, the McCain campaign is resorting to a depraved kind of political rhetoric that has never before been used in modern presidential campaigns by any major party. They are bringing the radical, twisted fringe of American political conflict into the center of their language and are thereby polluting our public debate and disgracing themselves.