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.
