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Mud Does Not Stick to Obama
Alexander Cockburn, FirstPost.co.uk
The race for the White House is becalmed amid a dearth of salacious scandals
Barack Obama's team worries that a politically significant slice of the American people think he's not really a Christian as he claims, but a closet Muslim plotting to haul the green crescent up the White House flagpole. But what else have the American people got to chew on in this lull before the big party conventions a month-and-a-half away, with the Olympics looming? Now that Hillary Clinton is out of the race, the campaign has gone flat.
At this time in the presidential race four years ago, the press was stuffed with rich fare about John Kerry's love affairs and the ample millions of his tiresome Portuguese wife, formerly married into the Heinz ketchup fortune. Eight years ago there was an equally nutritious menu featuring George Bush's taste for cocaine, his drink-driving rap and his de facto desertion from the National Guard.
For those eager to detect conspiracy in high places (c. 98 per cent of all adult Americans) there was the membership of Bush Sr and Jr and also Kerry in Yale's Skull and Bones club, where novices endured abominable rites, excitingly related on various Christian sites. Sample: "After this, the initiate is brought before a picture of Judas Iscariot, whose name the group screams three times, and then he is led to the heart of the rite: the initiate is pushed to his knees before a human skull filled with blood placed at the foot of a human skeleton called Madame Pompadour. The crowd implores him to 'Drink it! Drink it! Drink it!' and he does. Then he is hurried to a man dressed as the Pope. But not before the D whips him in the face with his tail."
And before that there was Clinton time, ripe with scandal for eight delightful years.
The Obama-McCain face-off is dull stuff thus far. The nastiest financial scandal in John McCain's life - his efforts to protect Arizona banker Charles Keating - exploded 18 long years ago. His caddish behaviour to the first Mrs McCain when he dumped her for the younger and very rich beer heiress Cindy Hensley was given a thorough workout last week by the Los Angeles Times, which reported that Nancy Reagan has never forgiven McCain for his foul conduct, hence her tepid endorsement of him. But since many Americans are divorced and stand accused by the betrayed partner as utter swine, McCain's not going to face too much trouble on this front.
Stories swirl around McCain's famously terrible temper and whether this has led to physical abuse of Cindy, prompting her to seek solace from gentler hands. But nothing credible by way of hard detail has surfaced thus far. Her majestic credit card debt - as much as half-a-million owed to American Express - excites only envy.
McCain's conduct as a PoW in North Vietnam has prompted fairly detailed accusations that he collaborated with his captors and gave them significant details of US Navy flight plans. But these have not yet displayed any traction that might dent his 'war hero' status. Efforts by the New York Times some months ago to link him to the attractive young lobbyist Vicki Iseman (left) also failed to stick.
Obama has weathered efforts to tie him to the Chicago real estate tycoon Tony Rezko, now convicted by a federal jury in Chicago on counts of fraud. Sillier attempts to turn Obama into a fan of the Weather Underground - a violent Sixties anti-war group - have failed. His married life with Michelle seems beyond reproach. His career in the Illinois legislature and then the US senate have not produced charges of direct corruption, though he has been a dutiful serf to large corporate interests, as has every member of US Congress with the possible exception of Ron Paul.
So, bleary Americans have nothing much else to brood upon beyond the fact that Obama is half black, has 'Hussein' as a middle name, spent formative years of his childhood in places like Indonesia surrounded by Muslims, and is married to an attractive black woman who said earlier this year that she'd been ashamed of America until her husband ran for the presidency.
Meanwhile the New Yorker is creating a stir by running its cover of Obama in ethnic dress bumping fists with Michelle sporting an Afro and a gun, with Osama bin Laden's portrait on the wall behind him and an American flag burning in the grate. Obama says it doesn't bother him, though it's a slur on Muslims. Liberals whine that it fans the flames of prejudice.
The magazine's editor, David Remnick, claims to be stunned and upset that satire has been confused with reality. This is the magazine that has never apologised for running a very influential though entirely fake story before the Iraq war claiming seriously that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in league. Either Remnick is being disingenuous or he's really stupid. Anyone familiar with editing material for the internet knows that satire is always taken as literal truth.
The latest New York Times-CBS poll shows that whites esteem Obama less than blacks and many of them don't care for Michelle. But the same poll shows that Obama leads McCain among Hispanic voters by 62 to 23 percent and that he's leading McCain overall by six points.
The best thing, almost the only thing, that the Republicans have going for them is the race card, often a reliable item in the American political deck. Thus far, because McCain is playing a very weak game, it has not brought them significant advantage.
