Today’s Washington Post editorial, “Race in the Race: Stop the distortions and the innuendo” contains some distortions and innuendo of its own. I’m amazed. Here’s just one paragraph:
Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have taken remarks of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former president Bill Clinton out of context and then unfairly criticized them for what they did not say. Mr. Clinton was accused of belittling Mr. Obama’s career or campaign as a “fairy tale.” But the “fairy tale” Mr. Clinton was referring to had to do with the much narrower issue of Mr. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war; the former president was bemoaning what he saw as a lack of attention to Mr. Obama’s — again, in Mr. Clinton’s view — inconsistent stances on the war.
To suggest that Mr. Clinton didn’t know that his “fairy tale” remark would be taken to refer to Mr. Obama’s career as a whole is naive. The Clinton campaign has embarked on three negative strategies, it seems to me. These are:
1) To belittle Obama’s career and accomplishments, a pervasive Clinton campaign theme and a corollary of Clinton’s claim that she alone is qualified to be president. Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” characterization has been fairly taken as an expression of this theme, though it was couched so as to give Mr. Clinton plausible deniability.
2) To undermine the credibility of Obama’s criticism of the Iraq war. This is the text of Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” characterization — belittling Obama’s career is the subtext.
3) To belittle Obama’s skill as an orator. Here, apparently the Post agrees with the Clintons, suggesting that “Mr. Obama [likens] his oratory and vision to that of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but (following the Clinton theme) that “presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as King, all had to do much more than orate to accomplish their goals.”
Of course, Obama has never likened his oratory and vision to Dr. King’s or President Kennedy’s. He has cited Dr. King and President Kennedy, something quite different. For a political opponent to blur that difference is one thing; for the editorial writers at the Post to do so is another. Now, a Clinton surrogate has said of Obama that he is no Martin Luther King — and the Post editorial quotes without irony or criticism, what Clinton said on “Meet the Press” two days ago:
Dr. King didn’t just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed. He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power, and he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving.
Not to belabor the issue, Obama is doing just what Clinton credits Dr. King with doing. He is running for president, acting, moving the political process. Of course Obama has had the temerity to run against Clinton, and he has done so in a way that threatens to define the campaign. If they are to defeat him, the Clintons have to prevent him from setting the campaign agenda in his own way. Hence, as Eugene Robinson puts it: “It could be that the idea is to engage Obama in so much tit-for-tat combat that his image as a new, post-partisan kind of politician is tarnished.” To be fair, the Post editorial probably suffers only from an attempt to provide a “balanced” view. If Clinton is to be criticized, then Obama must be equally so. But in this case I think balance is merely putative — more tit for tat combat.
I can almost go along with the Post editorial’s last paragraph, particularly with the last sentiment expressed:
A hallmark of Mr. Obama’s campaign is its transcendent, universal appeal. He refreshingly portrays himself as a candidate for the presidency who happens to be black, not the black candidate for president. As long as racial divisions remain in America, race is a legitimate, important subject for political debate. But the current finger-pointing is unproductive and even dangerous because it threatens to revive those divisions rather than bridge them. The candidates should use tonight’s debate to acknowledge that each of them has a demonstrated commitment to civil rights and move the discussion to a higher plane.
It’s hard to argue with that, except that it lets the Clintons off scot free. As a reader of several generations of student essays, I know that attacking someone’s language is equivalent to attacking that person’s identity. It seems to me that Obama’s replies to this attack have been particularly generous considering the nature of the attack, including Clinton’s attack via Dr. King. Whether the Clintons have intentionally injected race into the presidential campaign I can’t judge, but they have attacked Obama’s language in a particularly insidious way, by accusing him of being prolix, or full of words. It’s an ancient and dishonorable rhetorical ploy, an ad hominem designed to deprive one’s opponent of dignity. To yoke this attack to an evocation of Dr. King as equally a man of words, was unfortunate, as Obama has said — and in saying no more than that, Obama has put the kindest construction on it.
