As the Time headline asks "is he American enough," Beinart delves into what he sees as the "Racist" claim that Barack's foreign father is offputting to "white" Americans. He posits that this is the main reason why people cannot warm to Obama. Then Beinart claims that the strategy of the McCain campaign is one of "using race to make Obama seem anti-American." Beinart says these "attacks" are hurting Obama in the polls with "working-class whites." He also seems to say that the whole campaign is filled with code words such as questioning what "kind of person" he is. These all culminate into a racist attack that undermines Obama.
Beinart thinks he knows why it works so well against Obama, too.
Partly, of course, this is a response to Obama's unusual biography: his African Muslim father, his foreign-sounding name, his childhood outside the continental U.S. But it's also a measure of the times. The racial wedge issues of the 1970s and '80s--busing, crime, welfare, affirmative action--have all but disappeared. When pollsters compile lists of Americans' top concerns, those barely register. What is on the rise is anxiety about globalization. Support for unregulated free trade has cratered on the Democratic left. Hostility to illegal immigration is red hot on the Republican right. And beyond the partisan divide, it's the same demographic that is most upset about both: working-class whites.
Whether he wants to or not, Obama has come to personify this more globalized, multicultural--yes, cosmopolitan--America. It's one reason many liberals love him: he embodies a new America, more diverse, more tolerant and more open to the world. But as Penn's memo implied, that's also his Achilles' heel. As the face of America has changed, so has the face of American racism. Old-fashioned antiblack bigotry still exists, but today, far more than 20 years ago, white Americans are likely to associate dark skin with foreignness.
But this completely misses the entire point of what the right is saying about Barack Obama. There is no great outcry that Obama is black. There is no fear that he "represents" a "globalized" America. No one cares at all if he had a black, Kenyan father. The right isn't at all about black with Barack Obama. It's about red. Red as in communism.
Obamas ideology is the "not American enough" aspect that the right is attacking. It isn't about his skin or parentage. It's 100% about ideas. The right sees that Barack has surrounded himself with every sort of America hater throughout his lifetime. Obama's legislative record is anti-life, anti-First Amendment, anti-capitalist. He refused for a long time to even wear a simple American flag lapel pin. He's been seen in photos not putting his hand over his heart when others next to him on stage have done so. Obama has gone overseas to campaign for murderous communist dictators. Speaking of overseas, he is the darling of the anti-American left there. Obama has been an operative for a group responsible for the biggest vote fraud effort in American history (ACORN). He has associated with domestic terrorists, Ayres and Dorhn, racists like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and he's been endorsed by many different communist organizations from the local Chicago New Party all the way to the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Obama's entire history screams anti-America.
Barack Obama represents the most radically leftist politics that has ever been so close to taking the White House. He represents every ideological anti-American position the right can imagine. The right sees his socialist styled ideas and his communist inspired history. The right sees red, not black. No one cares a whit if he's black.
But Beinart can't see this because to him Obama's socialist background is nothing to be worried about. To Beinart, socialists and communists can be just as American as anyone else. And therein lies his confusion. After all, how can the right claim Obama is unAmerican if communism can be just as American as Mom, Apple Pie and Baseball? So, to him, if Obama's ideology can't be the reason the right is against him... why it MUST be racism!
And this is the ultimate sticking point. To any true American, one that loves America's history, one that's proud of the Founding Fathers and the principles those giants poured into this country, a communist or socialist cannot be a true American. For communists and socialists want to eliminate everything that is American and replace it with foreign ideas. They want to erase America and remake it into something it was never supposed to be. Conservatives feel that communists and socialists can't love America. After all, they want everything about it torn down and remade into something wildly divergent from what it should be.
So, it isn't Obama's foreign birth that the right stands against. It is his foreign ideas. Yes, it's ALL about ideas.
Beinart wraps up his misguided piece with an even more ridiculous claim.
Fifty years ago, America's racial challenges came largely from within, as black Americans demanded full equality in the country they had inhabited for hundreds of years. Today many of America's racial challenges come from without, as Third World immigration transforms the nation and U.S. workers and leaders struggle to come to terms with China and India, the emerging, nonwhite superpowers. If Martin Luther King Jr. symbolized that earlier transition, Barack Obama may have inadvertently come to symbolize this one. How he fares on Nov. 4 will be a sign of America's willingness to embrace the realities of a new age.
Is Beinart saying that a rejection of Barack Obama is a rejection of the whole world? Apparently, Beinart see his messiah as a man that represents the whole world and anyone against simply must be against everyone else. I can only laugh at this grandiose claim. It is also amusing to note that this fits in exactly with why real Americans reject Barack Obama. He really is of the world. And, doesn't this show that he isn't of America? Doesn't Beinart's feeling that Obama represents the world present the perfect example of why many Americans find the man unpalatable? Doesn't it tend to confirm the fears that Obama will not represent American interests but will bow to "the world" representing foreign interests?
Can anyone blame the right for voting against Barack Obama?
(Photo credit: daylife.com)
