I don’t intend to vote for Obama in the general election (I might not vote at all), and I am disturbed by the company he keeps, but it’s unfair (and probably useless) to condemn him for the actions of his supporters. Don’t get me wrong: People like Wright and Ayers are blots on the human race, and Obama should ideally repudiate them outright. The trouble is that they are simply not that uncommon nowadays, and they reflect a belief system too widespread for any presidential candidate to ignore.
Political discourse in the U.S. has never been all that polite; in fact, it is more civil and generous today than it was, say, during the Civil War (or the presidencies of Adams, Jefferson, or Jackson). Unfortunately, it has definitely taken a turn for the worse since the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. I lived in New York city in the nineties. I voted for Rudy Giuliani twice. It is impossible to convey the depth of the hatred that large numbers of people felt for Rudy (or the members of the NYPD, for that matter). As I recall, even the normally levelheaded Charles Rangel compared Giuliani to Hitler, and his policies to the Holocaust, and Rangel was a moderate compared to the real gasbags like Calvin Butts, Al Sharpton, and Jimmy Breslin.
The beliefs that the United States is an evil country, that it was founded by slaveholders and capitalists to oppress and rob Africans and native-Americans and women, that white Americans are inherently racist, etc.: These ideas have become commonplace. During the last several weeks I have seen numerous talking heads on the TV who insisted that the Rev. Wright was not a hatemonger but was simply speaking in the Christian “prophetic tradition”. On the “Slate” website, I estimate that a majority of those who commented on Obama’s “clinging to God and guns” statement either agreed with him or thought he didn’t go far enough in denouncing the rubes of Pennsylvania. I think this belief system is bullshit, but a lot of people go for it. I therefore find it difficult to demand that Obama denounce people who are now in the mainstream of his own party.
May I suggest that we change the dialogue a bit? Obama, being a senator from Illinois, has been a staunch supporter of subsidies for ethanol and other biofuel programs. Even before the recent increase in worldwide food prices, such disparate magazines as Consumer Reports, National Geographic, and Popular Mechanics questioned the wisdom of our ethanol policies, and there seems to be a consensus now that the developed world’s moves toward biofuels are causing a big part of the current food crisis in the developing world. Obama’s food and energy policies should therefore be given some serious discussion (Clinton’s and McCain’s policies should obviously be given a second look too). Discussion of tangible things like food prices and fuel efficiencies would, at the least, rescue our national dialog from the hatemongers.
