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McCain Campaign Accuses Obama Of Playing Race Card

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The New York Times

Published: August 1, 2008

ORLANDO - Sen. John McCain's campaign accused Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday of playing "the race card," citing his remarks that Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The exchange injected racial politics front and center into the general election campaign for the first time, after it became a dominant subtext in the primary between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It came as the McCain campaign was intensifying its attacks, trying to throw its Democratic opponent off course before the conventions.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, charged in a statement with which McCain later said he agreed. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

In leveling the charge, Davis was referring to comments that Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone and negative advertisements that have been coming his way from the McCain campaign in recent days, including one released Wednesday that likens Obama's celebrity status to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

"So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., echoing earlier remarks.

"You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

With his rejoinder about playing "the race card," Davis effectively assured that race would again become an unavoidable issue as voters face a historic election in which, for the first time, one of the major parties' nominees is African-American.

With its criticism, the McCain campaign was ensuring that Obama's race - he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas - would again be a factor in coverage of the presidential race, and on Thursday it took the spotlight from Obama when he had sought to attack McCain on energy issues.

It is a tactic that could cut both ways: It might tap into the qualms some white, working-class voters in crucial swing states may have about a black candidate, or it could ricochet back against the McCain campaign, which has been accused even by some fellow Republicans of engaging in overly negative campaigning in recent days.

The remarks put the Obama campaign, which has tried to keep Obama from being pigeonholed or defined by race, in a delicate position.

Obama did not address the issue himself on Thursday, and his campaign gingerly tried to tamp down the issue, saying that Obama did not believe that McCain had tried to use race as an issue.

"This is a race about big challenges: a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies," said Robert Gibbs, a campaign spokesman.

"Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they're using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he'll continue to talk about."

The sparring over race thrust an unpredictable element into the campaign.

Past contests have often been influenced by racial imagery, whether stark, like the Willie Horton advertisements run against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race, or subtle.

In the 2006 Tennessee Senate race, Republicans ran an advertisement against a black Senate candidate, Harold Ford Jr., featuring a white woman saying, with a wink, "Harold, call me." Some have drawn parallels between that advertisement and the McCain campaign's advertisement juxtaposing Spears and Hilton with Obama.

McCain addressed Davis' "race card" comments later Thursday.

"I agree with it, and I'm disappointed that Sen. Obama would say the things he's saying," McCain said aboard his campaign bus in Racine, Wis.

Davis' comments came as the McCain campaign has adopted a far more aggressive, negative posture towards Obama in recent days, trying to define him as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.

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