The Reverend Wright Enhances McCain’s White House Chances

By Brigitte L. Nacos
If you saw the recent ad sponsored by the Republican Party in North Carolina that featured Senator Barack Obama side by side with his “spiritual mentor of 20 years,” the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, you know what is in stock for Senator Obama in this fall’s general election campaign, if he becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee. While the North Carolina ad and similar ones elsewhere are part of congressional contests, the Wright-Obama association will become the predominant theme of this fall’s “Swift Boat” version. Under-the-belt campaign ads like the Willy Horton commercial and similar attack ads that derailed Governor Mike Dukakis presidential chances and the “Swift Boat” offensive against Senator John Kerry are typically financed and placed by groups that do not have official ties to the benefiting campaign. Like George H. W. Bush in 1988 and George W. Bush in 2004, John McCain will be able to distance himself from Obama-Wright ads, point to unaffiliated groups, and even disavow this tactic. But the damage will be done because negative campaign ads work—regardless of their sponsors. Chances are that Obama will be bombarded and maybe defeated by attack ads just like Dukakis and Kerry in earlier presidential races. 

Jonathan Martin of Politico reports that for the McCain camp and the Republican Party the assumption is that Obama is the nominee of the Democratic Party. Obviously, the McCain campaign and the Republican Party are poised to start the battle against Obama four months before the official start of the general campaign. As Martin writes, “The National Republican Congressional Committee has purchased $500,000 in anti-Barack Obama ads for use in two upcoming special House elections. The Republican National Committee is flooding reporters with anti-Obama emails. Presumptive nominee John McCain and GOP surrogates have seized on new remarks by Obama’s controversial former pastor.”

Senator Obama distanced himself clearly and sharply from Wright and his remarks during the pastor’s recent media blitz. While this belated clear-cut position satisfied his supporters, Independents and Democrats, who are committed to Senator Clinton, question Obama’s judgment in holding on to and defending the Reverend Wright for so long. Unlike attacks that are designed to smear Obama to be a racist, questions aiming at his sound judgment are legitimate. After all, Senator Obama has countered Senator Clinton’s claim of greater experience by pointing out that judgment is more important than experience. 

I hope that Hillary Clinton does not touch the Wright affair with a pole and continues to emphasize that the party will unify behind the nominee—regardless who wins. Yet, super-delegates ought to consider or reconsider whether Senator Clinton or Senator Obama has the best chances to beat Senator McCain. 

Before Obama became the Democratic front-runner, Republicans prepared to demonize Hillary Clinton, the most hated political figure in their ranks. But Obama’s poor judgment with respect to the Reverend Wright makes him now an easier target for the Republican attack machine.    

Comments

[review digital projector]

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[steven]

Hey Professor,

Hope all is well.

Would you mind updating our link to http://thenewrepublicans.net?

Best,
Steven

[Eric Chen]

In both the cases of Obama and Kerry, the Democrats invited controversy upon themselves.

The enmity by many in the veterans community toward Kerry due to his actions during the Vietnam War had an established history before the 2004 election. As a young soldier in the late 1990s, I learned that the collective memory of the Vietnam War defeat still causes psychic pain in the military. I didn't consider the Vietnam War when I joined the Army - it was old history - yet I was surprised in Basic Training when a drill sergeant, who probably wasn't born yet when the last American soldier was withdrawn from Vietnam, passionately talked to us about the Army's changes since the Vietnam War. Among soldiers, the wound from that war still felt that fresh, and associated with the wound, I heard about John Kerry. Even so, I didn't think about him until a lazy, web-surfing afternoon in 2001, soon after I had left the Army, when I came across a veterans against Kerry website. The material they posted, much of it 1st hand from Kerry, disgusted me as a recent veteran. It would be hard to characterize young Kerry as other than a traitor, and a foolish harmful one at that. So, years before the 2004 election, even as a casual observer, I understood that Kerry's relationship with the veterans community was problematic, at best.

Fast forward to the 2004 Presidential election. I was a volunteer on GEN Wes Clark's campaign, who had a long and distinguished military career, including as a combat officer wounded in Vietnam. But, Clark stumbled on the range of domestic issues and Kerry swept the nomination. Fine, I thought, it meant that Democrats didn't value the military reputation of the next Commander in Chief like I did - fair enough. So, I was surprised when the Democrats made the obvious strategic blunder of front-lining their campaign against Bush with the marketing of Kerry as a war hero based on his Vietnam War record. I thought, if the Democrats wanted an unassailable combat veteran, why didn't they pick GEN Wes Clark as their candidate? By marketing Kerry as a war hero, the Democrats practically challenged anti-Kerry veterans to push back with a passionate response.

Did the GOP help amplify and broadcast the message from the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"? No doubt, but the message was pre-existing and long-standing, not a Rove-ian invented slander as Democrats like to imply. It's hard for me to believe that the Democrats didn't know about Kerry's reputation among veterans when they made the obtuse decision to market him as a war hero in the 2004 election.

Similarly, Obama has a long, public, and uncommonly close affiliation with Reverend Wright. I have to qualify that by saying I'm not religious, so I can't speak with authority, but it seems that Obama's relationship with Wright goes beyond the usual pastor-congregant relationship. After all, Obama cites him as a major influence in his life, and named his book meant to define him as a Presidential candidate after a Wright sermon. In addition to the relationship, Obama's disjointed attempts to disassociate from Wright only raise more troubling questions. Is Obama not a transcendant figure, but merely just an ordinary expedient politician - as Wright implied in the Moyers interview? Can we believe Obama today about Wright when Obama only disassociated from Wright in hasty reaction to media scrutiny and public outcry? Is Obama a liar or a chameleon? What are his core principles - just what does Obama believe in and stand for?

In the end, Democrats can only blame themselves for making two very winnable Presidential elections harder than they should have been. They legitimated the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" scrutiny by marketing Kerry as a war hero candidate for war-time President. They legitimated the Wright-based scrutiny by marketing the powerfully attractive promise - symbolically and explicitly - that Obama is a post-Civil Rights era, post-racial progressive uniter.

Like Kerry's controversial history related to the Vietnam War, Obama's relationship with Wright is long-standing and a matter of record. I have to ask again: how could the Democrats have failed to anticipate the controversies that these problematic associations would cause?