I think Josh Marshall does a good job of describing the atmospherics (and even some of the psychology) behind John McCain’s bizarre town-hall meeting yesterday in Minnesota. I don’t have much to add. I want to talk about something else. One of the questioners that McCain had to chide and correct was a woman that said she can’t trust Barack Obama because he is an ‘Arab’.
In the next clip McCain is speaking up close with a woman in the audience who says she can’t trust Obama and then blurts out that it’s because he’s “Arab”. Some reports have it that she said ‘Arab terrorist’. But at least on this tape only ‘Arab’ is audible.
McCain shakes his head, as though losing his patience and snatches the mic back out of woman’s hands. “No, Ma’am. No, Ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
What’s going largely unremarked upon is that John McCain’s defense of Barack Obama is something of a non-sequitur. McCain seems to accept half this lady’s premise. He tells her, essentially, that Barack Obama is not an Arab. But he doesn’t challenge the idea that if Barack were an Arab that would be just cause not to trust him. There’s a rather loose logical construct to this brief exchange, but it’s unmistakable.
It goes like this:
Barack Obama is an Arab.
You can’t trust Arabs.
————————
You can’t trust Barack Obama
Which is then answered with:
You can’t trust Arabs.
Arabs are not decent family men or citizens.
Barack Obama is a decent family man and a citizen.
————————-
Barack Obama is not an Arab and can be trusted.
Set aside that the second construct is not a valid argument. That’s the argument that was made. And it is obviously offensive because two of the three premises in the second construct are offensive, and they were both tacitly granted by McCain.
If you want to know why John McCain pulled out of Michigan, I’d suggest it is partly because McCain’s campaign is premised on offending the huge Arab population of that state. Even in defending Obama from his loony-fringe, he can’t help but insult Arab-Americans everywhere.
Democrats are guilty of letting this type of attack go unanswered, as well. Democrats acknowledge the raw power of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric, and are most concerned with correcting the misimpression that Barack Obama is either an Arab or a Muslim. I’d note here, for the record, that many Arabs are Christians. A not small percentage of Palestinian suicide bombers have been Christian.
In part, this is a matter of choosing your battles. The Democrats have enough on their hands trying to get the first African-American elected president of the United States, without taking on the greater challenge of arguing there should be nothing wrong with electing a qualified Arab or Muslim. Nevertheless, it’s unseemly to let these prejudices go uncontested.
I don’t think the Obama campaign should lose their focus on the economy, but good people throughout the country need to stand up against the premise that there is something untrustworthy and fundamentally unpatriotic about Arab and Muslim-Americans.
You’re right, they should…but they have their hands full just on defending African-Americans from charges of being fundamentally unpatriotic (“Black folk caused the subprime mortgage mess!”) and doing the same with liberals (“Liberal Democrats in Congress caused the subprime mortgage mess!”).
Obama does have the opportunity to do the right thing here.
Hi Booman, I agree with your writings above, this whole direction of McCains has disturbed me greatly and I fear the Rep. nut base.
I had this discussion with my sister months ago when she asked if O was a muslim, I said no, but why should that make a difference in this land of religious freedom, nor should it make any difference if he is of Arab descent.. Should I amend my words to say land of Christian religious freedom.
By the way I think that lady in the audience was trying to think of Muslim and could only come up with Arab. Dana Bash talked to the lady later and she still insisted he was Arab.
On another topic, I was just listening to Sarah, the unrepentent, today and she is now bringing up Obama’s stance on abortion. She says he is for all and any abortions, and that people shouldn’t have to be saddled with a child they do not want. So that apparently is the new direction to replace the terrorist connections. Baby killer, I think will be the new rant. Does this have any legs insofar as his actual words.
Palin’s abortion argument is explained by this.
It will be marginally effective, but still had to compete with the economy, which is tipping undecideds that have difficulty ignoring their Church’s rantings.
That article was interesting, comments were even more so,…one of the ladies in interview commented down thread here
I was more getting to the point of Obama’s stance reg. abortion, what words he might have spoken that they can use, I did find this with a google. I think perhaps he is for PBA and that is always a very sticky thing.
Well, generally speaking, legal abortion is the more popular position. However, what Palin wants to do is freeze some of the Catholic vote in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, that is moving over to Obama due to the cratering economy. So, from that stand point, they figure they’ve already lost the pro-choice vote, but they want to avoid losing some of the anti-choice vote.
And, in pursuing that strategy they will probably talk about PBA and Obama’s comment about not wanting his daughters to be punished with a baby if they make a mistake.
It will work on the margins, but it’s a little like building a sand castle as a bulwark against the incoming tide.
BooMan, may I gently suggest using the more accurate and neutral “late term abortion” – which is, I believe, what the medical community uses – instead of the anti-choice (NOT pro-life) people’s emotionally loaded propaganda term, PBA?
It takes some effort sometimes, but I really try to avoid using their carefully-constructed terminology.
Well said.
As you note, the Dems haven’t exactly been at pains to distance themselves from these premises either. Anti-Muslim racism is possibly the last remaining ‘acceptable’ form of racial bigotry, and to the extent that it has facilitated U.S. aggression against Arabs and Muslims elsewhere, its victims number well over a million, at least. There really is no excuse for not challenging it in the most direct and uncompromising terms.
Boo —
Wrong link to TPM — it goes to their story on the Palin investigation.
thanks, fixed.
I think you’ve got several good points regarding McCain’s argumentative warrants — but want to go back to the video TPM supplies, which really is psychologically interesting in all kinds of ways.
That’s a guy that’s pissed off in at least five different directions:
I’m sure there’s at least a couple more. Oh:
5d. not letting him cop a feel, at least a little one on the sides;
8. America as a whole.
There’s still probably a few more, but I’m going out to breakfast.
Maybe some of the media b.s about “McCain’s authenticity” comes from the fact that he’s not very good at screening his facial expressions.
In order for people to disregard their own interests there has to be some “us” to which they sacrifice their interests. There can be no “us” without a readily identifiable, utterly other and hostile “them.” Thus, if the target audience considers themselves to be Christian family-oriented people then the “them” must be castigated as the polar opposite, so today Emmanuel Goldstein is an Muslim of Arab descent…
Thank you very much, BooMan, for saying this, and for saying it so well.
My immediate reaction on seeing that clip was that exactly what McCain was saying was “He’s a decent family man, so of course he is not an Arab”. That verbal expression is an indicator of the kind of thinking that has subliminally embedded itself in the American psyche, and is now reflexive, even for a huge number of people who actually know better than that.
Most Americans don’t hear anything wrong in “he’s not an Arab, he’s a decent family man”. But their reaction would be quite different if you inserted “black”, or “Asian”, or “Latino”, or “Jew”. At the very least they would notice something they don’t notice when the comment is about an Arab or a Muslim.
Poor John McCain. He has sold his soul to the devil. He is under the spell of the very same Rove/Schmidt/smear cabal that years ago viciously attacked him and spread rumors that he had collaborated with his North Vietnamese captors and then fathered a black child out-of-wedlock. McCain’s desperation for power has thrust him to into the arms of his former defamers. His embrace of the dark side has led him to become the very essence of what he pontificates to be against. Now he stokes dangerous lies and evil prejudices in his pathetic lust for power.
But this has not been McCain’s only lapse of judgment. He has often been seduced by the dark side: such as by those who would criminally plunder the American political/economic system. His economic mentor has been his former campaign manager, Phil Gramm, a lobbyist for foreign financial interests who works ceaselessly to deregulate our system so his buddies can plunder it and even enjoys mocking those who are hurt in the process as “whiners.” Before Gramm, McCain was a sycophant and toady for the criminal financial swindler, Keating, who would fly McCain and his wife on vacations in return for McCain’s help in keeping the regulators off his back. McCain and his wife enabled Keating to pull off a catastrophic financial scandal that destroyed many innocent lives.
But the true tragedy of McCain’s moral shortcomings is not his own pathetic lust for fame but in those who have enabled McCain to bamboozle the American public into thinking he is an honorable man. The true tragedy is the cowardice or ineptitude of people like Obama and Biden who keep insisting McCain is an honorable and worthy opponent. Obama and Biden never once point out in their speeches McCain’s moral and ethical unfitness for higher office. Thus they give credence to McCain’s posturing as some great moral hero and hence of the veracity of his concerns.
The great national question of this campaign should obviously be as to McCain’s moral fitness to run for office. And the duty of anyone responsibly running for office is to point this out to the American people. Instead, because of total ineptitude (or cowardice), the national question is as to some silly inconsequential brief relationship of Obama with an ex-radical on some Chicago school committee. (And don’t bring up in the campaign’s defense some obscure link to an overly long college lecture type video on the Keating scandal – that is not bringing the issue to the table.) The only thing saving the Obama/Biden campaign from its own blunders is a world economic collapse and that is the true tragedy of our present election.
re: “Obama and Biden never once point out in their speeches McCain’s moral and ethical unfitness for higher office.”
I’d rather they do that (focus on policy v. namecalling) for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that it is the only logical path for undecided voters trying to use reason to make their decision.
Another reason is the elephant in the room – whether he is the first black to succeed in this race, he is a historical figure for having come this far, and is conducting himself in a manner worthy of that distinction. Right or wrong – mocking the gimpy POW for moral deficiency would be a hard cell to the reasonable undecideds. As it is, Palin is definitely going winkingly ahead with her “Don’t vote for Darky” campaigning.
I think McCain himself is regretting letting his campaign venture into this area and wishes he could find a way to make it about the policies again. If McCain has implicitly or explicitly travelled this path and is visibly regretting the failure, do you still think it’s advisable for Obama to travel it?
Barring another stolen election, I think trying to keep discussions on the actual focal points has enough meat on the bones.
Pointing out John McCain’s record in the Senate, the fact that he was censured for “bad judgment” for trying to get regulators off Keating’s back, has nothing to do with going down the “smear path.” It is the duty of any presidential contender to point out problems with his opponent’s public record.
I don’t understand the knee-jerk passivity of all of Obama’s supporters. Its eerily reminiscent of the same reaction I got when pointing out to Kerry supporters during the 2004 campaign that he was deficiently passive in going after his opponent. The only reason Obama is winning right now is the economic collapse.
This example I don’t object too BTW – it’s based in fact and does not go very far off script into editorializing.
Pushing the equivalent of the emotional Obama bashing with an angry mob chanting KILL HIM about McCain by calling him a terrorist is what I object to.