Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [59]
The mainstream media lapped up Obama’s “race problem” like chocolate milk, evenhandedly presenting both sides of the issue as if there were actually two sides to the issue. Obama eventually concluded that he would have to address the matter directly. He delivered a powerful speech about American race relations that former Republican secretary of state Colin Powell called “a very, very thoughtful, direct speech”92 and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews praised as “the best speech ever given on race in this country.”93
But people like Sean Hannity only heard one sentence, “[My grandmother] uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” That’s all that they had to hear to confirm what they already believed: Obama hates white people. When Obama tried to clarify the comment a few days later, he further confirmed their dark suspicions by calling his grandmother a “typical white person,” which caused them to repeat the phrase “threw his grandmother under the bus” in every other sentence for the next twelve months. According to Limbaugh, Obama’s comment revealed that he had officially converted from Halfrican to all-black: “Obama has disowned his white half . . . he’s decided he’s got to go all in on the black side.”94
The Maverick
Two factors kept the general election from becoming an all-out race fest. First, Obama eventually denounced Rev. Wright and studiously avoided giving the right any ammunition that it could twist into a persecution narrative. Second, Senator John McCain chose not to play the race game. McCain had vowed early on to run a respectful campaign. He soon proved that respectful is a relative term. He ran ads that compared Obama to celebrity Paris Hilton and a false messiah called “the One.” He sought to associate him with bad guys like Bill Ayers the Weatherman, Tony Rezko the slumlord, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Islamic despot, and Hamas the terrorist organization. But McCain did not do the one thing that his advisors and his vice presidential candidate urged him to do.
“Wright is off the table,” said one top campaign official. “It’s all McCain. He won’t go there. His advisers would have gone there.” Early in his campaign, McCain promised not to talk about Rev. Wright, and except for a brief reference in April of 2008, he remained true to his word. A Republican official explained, “There’s a slippery slope in politics on the racial divide, and Senator McCain made it very clear early on that he did not want to get into that area . . . McCain doesn’t want to be known as a racist candidate.”95 And so, when John McCain conceded the election on November 4, he was able to praise in good faith the “special significance” of Obama’s historic election.
If Nixon’s old strategist, Pat Buchanan, can be believed, McCain’s restraint may have cost him the presidency. The day after the election, Buchanan wrote an article called “An Unnecessary Defeat?” in which he argued that McCain had screwed up:
While Barack was locking up black America, McCain failed to hold on to Bush’s share of the white working class . . . Perhaps fearful his “good guy” reputation with his old buddies in his media “base” would be imperiled, McCain ruled