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Nigeria: U.S. Presidential Campaigns Turn Ugly, Nasty, Mean

Farooq A. Kperogi

14 October 2008

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analysis

Atlanta — Barack Obama's decisive, almost insurmountable, lead in the polls and with it the seeming inevitability of his emergence as America's next president has Republicans frustrated and bewildered. The sense of helplessness that this reality has spawned among Republicans has provoked one of the rawest and meanest campaigns in America's political history.

To be sure, negative attacks in the twilight of political campaigns are an enduring feature of American politics. However, many American pundits from a broad spectrum of political persuasions concede that the negativity of this year's presidential campaigns where crowds openly call for opponents' assassination has no parallel in recent memory. In the last two weeks, McCain and his ticket-mate Sarah Palin have been hurling vitriolic and racially tinged personal attacks on Obama in a bid to halt what appears like the inexorable certainty of his march to the White House. In their stump speeches, they have taken to questioning Obama's patriotism and character by invoking his past associations with a 1960s white American radical called William "Bill" Ayers who belonged to the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist organization that carried out bombings of government buildings, including the Pentagon, to protest against America's involvement in the prolonged Vietnam War between 1954 and 1975. Obama was only eight years old when the bombings took place, and he has publicly condemned and renounced Ayers' acts as "reprehensible" and "despicable."

Bill Ayers, who is now a key figure in mainstream Chicago political life and works as a "Distinguished Professor" of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, is Obama's neighbor in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. He also served, along with Obama, on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project, a foundation set up by a billionaire Jewish American by the name of Walter Annenberg (whose widow, interestingly, is now a McCain supporter) to reform public education in Chicago. This was between 1995 and 2001. Again, between 2000 and 2002, Obama and Ayers served on the board of a poverty-eradication NGO called the Woods Fund of Chicago.

These bits of information about Obama's associations with the former radical have become fodder for guilt-by-association attacks on Obama by the McCain campaign. However, report after report by top U.S. newspapers that have bothered with the issue-the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New Yorker, and the New Republic-have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship.

On October 3, 2008, the New York Times ran another front-page story titled "Obama and '60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths." The paper concluded that, based on its extensive review of records, Ayers has had no influence on Obama and that "since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship."

Palin and McCain cash in on Times story to smear Obama

However, although the Times and other U.S. media didn't find any incriminating link between Obama and Ayers, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin (who couldn't name a newspaper when a reporter asked her what newspapers she reads to keep abreast of events in the nation and in the world), cashed in on the Times report to launch virulent attacks on Obama's patriotism and character. In truth, though, the McCain campaign had decided, long before the Times report, that the only way they could slow down, and perhaps permanently arrest, Obama's frightening momentum was to dig up dirt about him from his past. A McCain campaign official had said that the best way to turn the steam from Obama was to move the national discourse away from the economy. "We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days," Greg Strimple, a McCain adviser told the Washington Post. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."

A day later, another top McCain adviser reinforced this. "It [that is, personal attacks on Obama] is a dangerous road, but we have no choice," he told the Daily News. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose." The Times report on Obama's associations with Ayers only provided a convenient opening for a well-planned attack strategy.

Obama as terrorists' friend

On October 4, at a rally in Denver in the state of Colorado, Palin, quoting the Times, began the carefully planned assault on Obama's patriotism and character. She alleged that Obama is friends with terrorists, is un-American, and therefore shouldn't be trusted by Americans to be their next president. "One of [Obama's] earliest supporters is a man who was a domestic terrorist," she said. "[Obama] is not a man who sees America as you and I do - as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

At every subsequent rally, she has repeated the charge, before riotously animated crowds of Republican supporters, that Obama is a "friend of terrorists." In time, the attacks got traction in the national media. To guard against the possibility of the attacks being drowned out by the nagging concerns over a perilously faltering economy, the McCain campaign decided to release a new 90-second Web ad on October 9 highlighting Obama's relationship with Ayersa tactic that elongated the shelf life of the character assassinations on Obama in the national political discourse.

"Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They've worked together for years. But Obama tries to hide it. Why?" a voice says before reeling off examples of Obama's ties to Ayers.

"Obama's friendship with terrorist Ayers isn't the issue," the narrator then claims.

"The issue is Barack Obama's judgment and candor. When Obama just says, 'This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood.' Americans say, 'Where's the truth, Barack?' Barack Obama. Too risky for America."

McCain supporters call for Obama's assassination

The notion that Obama is "too risky for America," a borderline racist scare tactic that obliquely hints that he would destroy America from within when he is elected president, has led to overt calls for Obama's assassination by McCain-Palin supporters in several rallies.

The Washington Post is the first newspaper to bring to public attention one such incident. According to the Post, at a rally in Florida, Palin amplified her hate rhetoric against Obama and created enough frenzy to incite a member of her audience to call for Obama's assassination. "Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin was reported to have said during the rally.

"Boooo!" roared the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd roared again.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience. It didn't stop there. According to the Post, "one Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American [media man] and told him, 'Sit down, boy'." This was not an isolated incident. At another campaign rally in Pennsylvania, a McCain supporter screamed, "Off with his head" when Obama's name was mentioned by McCain. Later that day in Ohio, a man stood outside a rally holding a sign with the inscription "Obama, Osama." And at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, someone in the crowd wore a T-shirt portraying Obama putting on a devil mask.

Now, it has become the defining feature of rallies addressed by McCain, Palin and McCain's wife, Cindy, for Obama to be called "terrorist," "traitor," "Osama Obama," "Nobama," by frenzied Republican crowds (or what some people here call "Rethuglican" crowds because of the thuggish behaviors of the crowds). In all such cases, the speakers either egg the crowds on or indulgently ignore them.

In several campaign speeches, when McCain asks "who is the real Barack Obama?" someone from the crowd would often cry out "terrorist!" according to several media reports.

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