Posted on 05/22/2008 3:38:56 AM PDT by markomalley
The main obstacle standing between Barack Obama and the White House was distilled into five words by a local television correspondent in South Charleston, W.Va., earlier this month.
Prefacing a question about the challenges of winning over white, blue-collar voters, the reporter offered this observation: “They think you are un-American,” he said.
Such questions, asked by reporters and plainly on the minds of voters in Appalachia and elsewhere, are the fruits of an unprecedented, subterranean e-mail campaign.
What began as a demonstrably false attempt to cast Obama as a Muslim has now metastasized into something far more threatening to the likely Democratic nominee. The spurious claims about his faith have spiraled into a broader assault that questions his patriotism and citizenship and generally portrays him as a threat to mainstream, white America.
The spread of these e-mails has forced Obama to embark on a campaign to Americanize his image and his biography. Pivoting away from his pitch to a primary election audience uninterested in flag-waving and nationalism, he’s returning to the message that first brought him to the national spotlight in 2004: the idea that his is the quintessential American story.
He’s also drawing the campaign into partisan combat, blaming Republicans for the smears even though they have not been traced back to GOP sources. “The Republicans, they’re trying to make [it] ‘this is not about you; it’s about me.’ They’re trying to say, ‘Well, Obama, we don’t know him that well, he hasn’t been around that long, he’s got a funny name; maybe he’s a Muslim,’” Obama said Monday in Montana. “They want to make people worry about me.”
Ironically, the smear campaign represents the dark side of the Internet’s emerging dominance in American politics — a phenomenon that has driven Obama’s unparalleled grass-roots and financial campaigns. After harnessing the Web to great advantage, Obama is now struggling to beat back the viral threat from the same uncontrollable medium.
“In the old days, communication was more centralized,” notes veteran GOP ad man Alex Castellanos, the father of Jesse Helms’ famous affirmative action ad. “If you were attacked in one venue, you dealt with it there. A TV problem was dealt with on TV, a radio problem on radio. It was top-down and it was manageable.”
The anti-Obama e-mails now bouncing around the Internet have multiplied and are difficult to track, though the website Snopes.com has catalogued and debunked many of them. But the themes are similar: Elements of his biography make him too exotic, or unknown, to be president.
One features a made-up quote in which Obama “explains” why he purportedly doesn’t place his hand over his heart during the national anthem.
“There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression,” the e-mail quotes Obama as saying. “And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message.”
Obama has never said such a thing.
Another makes the false claim that Obama was sworn into the Senate on the Quran.
He took the oath on the Bible.
Then there is perhaps the least subtle e-mail, “The Genealogy of Barack Hussein Obama in Pictures,” which includes numerous pictures of the candidate’s dark-complexioned relatives on his father’s side in native African garb.
The e-mailers aren’t troubled by the dissonance between two lines of attack — the assertion that he’s a Muslim and the claim that he belongs to a radical black Christian church — though one goes as far as to try to reconcile the apparent conflict by arguing that Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ is covertly Muslim, something that would come as a surprise to its parishioners.
Smear campaigns have a rich history in politics. Many Americans believe that President Bill Clinton had an aide murdered or that President Bush had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers.
And this one would be a shameful but largely irrelevant mark on this historic election but for one thing: Voters widely and repeatedly cite information that has been gleaned directly or indirectly from the e-mails to explain why they won’t support Obama.
A Pew survey found that one in 10 Americans think Obama is Muslim, a misperception that crosses party lines.
A focus group conducted with 12 independent voters for NBC and The Wall Street Journal earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., found that fully half said “no” when asked point-blank if they thought of Obama as an American. Two believed he is a Muslim and another mentioned the Quran fabrication.
“They have no sense of his roots,” explained Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster who conducted the survey. “They just are confused, uninitiated and uncertain about who he is and what his background is.”
An eye-opening video shot by the online Real News Network earlier this month in West Virginia drove that point home.
One voter concludes that, “The United States of America should be run by somebody from the United States of America.” When reminded by the reporter capturing the footage that Obama is, in fact, American, the voter responded: “He’s Muslim.”
Nearly every day of the primary, newspaper stories in places from the Pacific Northwest to Pennsylvania have been filled with similar anecdotes.
So, as he pivots from wooing left-of-center primary voters to winning over the broader American electorate, chief among Obama’s priorities will be dispelling the notion that he is somehow not fully American.
Obama’s campaign has built a pioneering Web-based apparatus to debunk the myths, but the candidate himself has also begun to fight back against the smear in symbolic and substantive ways, following the same model used on the original Muslim claims.
When confronted with the Muslim e-mails, Obama last year began talking more openly about his Christianity and using most campaign Sundays to attend church services. His campaign reinforced the point with a less-than-subtle mail piece showing the candidate in a pulpit, a gold cross shimmering in the background. It was mailed out in South Carolina and was revived for the Kentucky primary.
Now Obama is taking steps to incorporate a patriotism rebuttal to go with his faith pushback.
After scoffing last year at the need to wear a flag pin on his lapel — grounds for one of the e-mail attacks — Obama has begun to affix the stars and stripes to his suit coat.
And he’s begun to talk about the side of his family that more Americans can relate to.
In the Democratic primary, his unique and unlikely life story was part of what many cosmopolitan voters found compelling about him.
“Here’s a guy who could get us right with the world again” is how Al Cross, a veteran political reporter and the head of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, characterized the perception among some Democrats. “His entire persona is globalized, and his name lends credibility with people who we need credibility with. What better change agent could there be?”
And in the early going, Obama embraced that distinctiveness.
Targeting Hispanic voters in Nevada, he even stressed the foreign element of his story, with a narrator of his radio advertisement describing him as “the son of a foreign father who came to this country in search of a better life.”
But while his first book was called “Dreams From My Father,” it’s his late mother and her white family who have come to take center stage as Obama confronts not just challenges among blue-collar voters but also fundamental questions about who he is.
He’s made pilgrimages to middle America — to his mother’s hometown in Kansas and to an ancestral property on his maternal side in Indiana — and featured images of both his mother and her parents in TV ads.
And he’s increasingly laced his stump speech with references to his grandfather’s World War II service, noting recently that Stanley Dunham was buried with an American flag around his casket.
Later this year, he’ll go to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, where Dunham is buried, and pay homage.
He’s also hoping that allies — elected officials and labor unions — can tell his story to people who trust them.
Chuck Rocha, the political director of the United Steelworkers union, said that Obama’s Horatio Alger tale would make him an easier sell with white union members.
“Our members couldn’t relate with John Kerry because of his background, where he came from,” Rocha said. “Barack Obama comes from a lot of the same pasts that a lot of our members do — just growing up a regular kid.”
Rocha, whose union endorsed Obama, said union members will “trust us more than some thing they read on the Internet or some other trumped-up lies.”
“It’s going to be an education process,” said Mike Caputo, a United Mine Workers of America official in West Virginia, whose union endorsed Obama on Wednesday.
Obama’s challenge this summer will be to use his unprecedented political celebrity to get his story out.
“Most people don’t know much about Obama’s personal life,” said Vanderbilt University professor John G. Geer, explaining why some voters are susceptible to falsehoods. “He needs to talk about his values. Right now, people are filling in the narrative because he hasn’t filled it.”
And Geer had a candid assessment of why people are accepting falsehoods as truths.
“It’s easier to believe because his name is Barack Obama,” he said.
E-mail smears are fine when they happen to a conservative...but are dangerous when they happen to a neo-Marxist. Things that make you go hmmmmmm.
This quote is not a falsehood, it is what Barry said and what he believes. He's going to “take things away from you for the common good” (HClinton SF 2006) but he's going to get the U.N. global body involved in your life to do it.
Why? Because the media says its false? I would say Obama and the good Reverend are more in line with The Nation of Islam than with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
It would be funny if McCain would say in a stump speech "We just toppled Saddam Hussein and now.. well you know.
Barack Obama is un-American.
While certain viral e-mails contain falsehoods, that does not make the above statement a smear.
Gimme a break. The guy is a lightweight in the Senate, has not been in their long enough to even have a track record and is a left-wing liberal that would send us back to the Carter years. That’s what i’ve read about him...and that is from actually listening to the guy, not some ‘viral e-mail’ campaign. Don’t even get me started about the wife, the pastor, and the weatherman. He’s the captain of his own ship, it’s there for anyone to see. Who needs a smear campaign when his throughts and deeds are a matter of public record??????
their = there. I hate when I see that anywhere else, should have doen a better job of proofing before posting..
“A Pew survey found that one in 10 Americans think Obama is Muslim....”
The other 90% are ignoramuses who haven’t taken the trouble to do basic research or are so partisan that they might be thrilled about possibly having a muslim, terrorist lover as president.
If Obama-lama-ding-dong was president, we would be LONGING for the Carter years.
He’s the captain of his own ship alright.....the Titanic.....and the giant iceberg looming ahead for Obama is the general election.
Did you know that Jesse Jackson so hates whites that he has admitted that once while working in a restaurant, he spit in the food of whites?
Disgusting, but true. Google it.
Awesome video:
The same kind of terrorists who support Obama did this:
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/
Never apologize for them.
Never appease them.
Never forget.
LOL, as if Americans are too dumb to see the brilliance of Obama and could only vote against the most bestest President ever because of lies by those evil Republicans.
No, Obama needs to lie to the voters to convince them he really isn't a terrorist-appeasing reincarnation of Jimmy Carter liberal.
"Those bad, bad non Obama voters, we need to tell them the truth about this great, misunderstood man!"
Obama’s comments this weekend at last finished his signature policy sentence.
YES WE CAN
TELL YOU NO YOU CAN’T
"Those bad, bad non Obama voters, we need to tell them the truth about this great, misunderstood man!"Obama is perfect in every way. The only reason people would decline to vote for him is if they are uneducated, bitter or racist. [/sarcasm]
They know Obama is a hard core lefty, thats why they love him, but they think they can fool the masses. Its the same thing they did with Kerry, maybe because they are so emotional and detached from the heartland.
Obama is really a son of a Kenyan Muslim. He is a very hardcore abortionist who will raise everyones taxes. He attends a church based on black liberation, which translates into "hate white people". His wife is a bitter unlikable woman and his middle name is Hussein.
Do these liberals think that after WWII Americans would have elected a guy named Adolph?.
this is how it will play out.
John (Christian name) McCain, descendant from long line of defenders of America, tortured for his love of country, very experienced.
Barak Hussein Obama (Muslim Name) born of African Muslim dad, white hippie mom. 1 term Senator.
“They want to make people worry about me.”
By golly, it doesn’t take much to do that.
"On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said in Florida that in a meeting with the Iranians he'd make it clear their behavior is unacceptable" <> - Karl Rove, WSJ 05-22-08
...and his following will cheer in the background.
It is really scary that I live in the same container as people who think this kind of mindset is a good thing and in our best interest. Anyone with an IQ above 60 realizes just how generic and pandering a statement like this is. And we see this repeatedly, over and over. He delivers scripted speeches very well with a strong and confident voice and posture. But when it comes down to being forced to use his own words on the fly and pull from his "experience" and ideals he falls to the level of debating a complex network issue with my cable internet providers first tier tech support. You tell them you are experiencing packet loss and they ask you if you are using internet explorer or firefox. They aren't stupid, they are just both out of their league and the issue at hand falls outside the boundaries of their script... at which point they both get completely lost.
I find it so hard to comprehend how anyone who isn't technically mentally handicapped can support this guy or accept his ideology as their won. It's embarrassing at the very least. Seriously, imagine what the Iranians were thinking when they saw this clip on TV. I can picture them rolling on the floor in uncontrolled laughter.
And McCain is not?
Don't get me wrong, I think Obama would be the worst president in a century, but I also think McCain would the worst since Carter (who is the worst in a century). The difference is the GOP could oppose Carter and deliver Reagan. What would we do if Carter were a Republican?
Since their domestic policies and UN subordination are so similar, we're better off opposing the democrat than our "republican" (note: very loose quotes) in the White House.
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