Fanning Fear of a Black President ?

Two commentators from different parts of the political spectrum have raised the issue of whether the race card has been played against Senator Barack Obama via the use of more subtle code words.

The Huffington Post’s Mario Ruiz writes:

With Hillary’s big Ohio win and smaller Texas one, look for the whackos to become unhinged in their racist attacks on Obama now that they perceive some vulnerability in the candidate. And they’ll do it in a way that makes it seem like Obama acts like he has something to hide.

For a case study on how to insidiously inject race into the race, take a look at Amir Taheri’s column today in the New York Post: “Obama’s Real Mideast Problem – It’s His Policies, Not His Heritage.”

While Taheri’s headline focuses on Obama’s mideast policies, those don’t come up till more than halfway through his piece. The first half reveals Taheri’s true agenda: getting voters scared about a black American running for president who happens to have a father who’s Kenyan. First is a detailed exposition of the name “Hussein”: “one of the most popular names for Muslims, especially Shiites.” How special. Next up, details on where the names “Barack” and “Obama” come from: the former, Arabic for ‘blessing,’ and the latter referring to Obama’s “father’s tribe who converted to Islam.” Taheri ultimately bottom lines it: “In other words, ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ is a perfectly common identifier for someone with an ethnic East African Muslim background (emphasis mine).”

Has anyone informed Taheri that Obama’s parents separated when he was two years old and that he was raised — mostly in Honolulu — by his white mother and her parents? Or that, throughout his early years, Obama was commonly known at home and school as “Barry”? Or that Obama’s East African Muslim father — so integral to Obama’s “exotic” “family story” — attended Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies?

The column fairly oozes racial innuendo.

He has a lot more so read it all (we’re sure it will spur debate between the increasingly bitter supporters of Clinton and Obama).

And then there’s conservative Robert Novak writes about Senator Hillary Clinton’s political comeback in three key primary wins in a newsletter column titled: Hillary’s Wins Raise Prospect of the Unthinkable — A Contested Convention. He writes:

# Think about the unthinkable: a contested Democratic convention in Denver, with the identity of the Democratic presidential nominee unknown until just before Labor Day. That’s the impact of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) remarkable performance Tuesday that broke her long losing streak against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): a big win in Ohio where she was supposed to win narrowly, if at all, and unexpected wins in Texas and Rhode Island.

# A group of prominent Democrats was being formed secretly to go to Clinton to ask her to bow out for the sake of party solidarity. Now, neither candidate, counting their current super-delegates and potential unpledged delegates, can win a majority of delegates even after the Pennsylvania primary April 22. It is hard to imagine either bowing out. That raises the possibility of carnage in Denver with the super-delegates and the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations in play.

Novak gives plenty of informed analysis on the Democratic and Republican primaries, analyzing various factors that contributed to Clinton’s good night and Obama’s bad night. One section:

Exit polls also suggest that Bill Clinton successfully played his racial angle. Concentrating on Obama’s blackness, stressing that it’s fine for African-Americans to support a black candidate, Clinton drove home the idea that Obama is a “black candidate.” According to exit polls, Obama carried 86 percent of the black vote in Ohio and only 33 percent of the white vote. Clinton won big among those polled who indicated the candidate’s race was important.

There will be those who will argue this is all a bunch of hooey, that none of this was ever meant this way and that Ruiz and Novak are reading it wrong — that it’s all a matter of perception. Yet, politics is indeed perception and political professionals know it.

Obama’s critics argue the Illinois Senator’s own campaign has played the race card. Obama’s followers will counter he started out being considered by most Americans as a guy who was running who happened to be black and that the way his critics have battled him is by working on the message that he is a black — or black American with some-eyebrow-raising background — who is running.