January 17, 2008
We know three things about modern American presidential campaigns: They go on for too long, they end too soon, and when the going gets tough, the tough get ugly.
You see the ugliness on the Democratic side with a distracting debate between the Clinton and Obama camps about race. A characteristically wonkish comment by Mrs. Clinton about LBJ’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act was portrayed by Obama supporters as an attack on Martin Luther King Jr. A candidate with no record of racial animus and a demonstrated commitment to civil rights, Clinton was forced to wear the hair shirt and prove her racial bona fides.
What goes around comes around: In an overheated column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen demanded that Obama distance himself from a church magazine called The Trumpet, which praised Louis Farrakhan. The magazine is edited by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, of which Obama is a member. “It’s important to state right off that nothing in Obama’s record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan,” writes Cohen. Nevertheless, Cohen wrote that Obama has an obligation to speak out and denounce his pastor’s views.
In a depressingly familiar exercise, Obama did just that, issuing the following statement: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
The statement passed muster with the Anti-Defamation League, which issued its own statement, saying it welcomed Obama’s comments.
Like the debate over King’s legacy, the Farrakhan spectacle was more about political theater than real issues. Their perpetrators shared a willingness to overlook a public figure’s own track record and to reduce a career to a single off-the-cuff statement or a triple-bank-shot connection between a parishioner and his pastor.
The fight against racism and anti-Semitism is a crucial, literally life-and-death issue, and this country’s history shows why we must be ever vigilant in confronting hate. But effectively combating poisonous attitudes means maintaining perspective, identifying real threats, and judging leaders based on the fullness of their words and deeds.