The American president Americans have been waiting for!
That’s the tag line on John McCain’s new ad, which features a film clip of McCain as a captured POW and a baritone-voice narrator asking, “What must a president believe about us, about America?” He kindly provides the answer: “That she is worth protecting.” Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name–who might be a secret Muslim–can’t protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected? This smacks of the George H.W. Bush smear-tossing campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988–but also of Hillary Clinton’s claims that Obama is not yet ready to be commander in chief.
By the way, when has America not had an “American president”?
If the Republican campaign is this vulgar and creepy seven months ahead of the election, expect much worse in the fall.
