Paul Waldman on what the current attacks on Obama tell us about the upcoming general election:
Listen to the McCain campaign, and you'll hear that they intend only to engage in a debate about "issues," one that will elevate the discourse and offer voters an opportunity to make a reasoned, considered decision about the future of their country. If so, it would certainly be a reversal of every campaign in recent times. The pattern we've gotten used to is that the Democrat argues that he has a superior set of ten-point plans, and urges the electorate to peruse them, while the Republican points to the Democrat and says, "That guy is a liberal elitist who hates you, hates God, and hates America."
Not in so many words, of course. But what Republicans have understood is that campaigns are about identity, not issues. And the identity they're trying to paste on Barack Obama comes down to two words: The Other.
Consider the smears of Obama that have slithered around the internet and over the airwaves in recent months: He's a secret Muslim. He attended a fundamentalist madrassah as a child in Indonesia. He's tight with Louis Farrakhan. He takes advice from a cabal of Israel-hating anti-Semites. He doesn't put his hand over his heart when he says the Pledge of Allegiance. He took his oath of office on a Koran, not a Bible. He doesn't wear an American flag pin. (The last is the only one of these that is actually true, ridiculous though it may be).
Read the rest (and comment) here.
--The Editors
