The Red Sea Swiftboat

Exploring How The McCain Campaign's Recent Lies Attempt To Undermine Obama Where He Is Strongest — His Poised Leadership — While Distracting The Public From The GOP's Greatest Weakness, Its Hubris.

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The Big Red (State) Machine is gearing up for battle.  The Republican Party, and its presidential
candidate, have gone on the attack with just under one hundred days left until
November 4^th.  They are doing
this instead of focusing on highlighting what Senator John McCain brings to the
table or how the Republican Party intends to move beyond the presidential
administration that has left us with a destabilized Middle East and alienated
allies, a hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast that remains unaided, unheeded, and
unhealed in so many ways, and an economic downturn that is leaving tens of
thousands jobless and causing all of us to pay $4 a gallon for gas.

Rather than address the public policy problems facing our
nation, the GOP is filling up its playbook with various ways of attacking
Senator Barack Obama, ranging from his supposed inexperience to his dreamt up
softness on terrorism to his being out of touch with the “average American
family” because of where he once went to church.  Do you doubt that the Republicans are in
full-scale production with their assaults that will last from here until
Election Day?  Let’s keep in mind that
many of the same people who ran Bush’s campaigns are now on board with McCain
(Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt
joined this time last month); and here are just a few of the sites that the RNC
has setup since then:

The Rove-Run Republican Machine has found a new angle
against Barack Obama; and it is hitting him hard and often on it.  While phrased in different ways, it is out of
the same playbook that brought us the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004.  Like then, the GOP is now decrying Democrats
as inept in the very area in which Republicans are weakest and Democrats are
strongest in this election.  Among the
first places the argument appeared was in Charles Krauthammer’s “The Audacity
of Vanity,"
in which he flippantly wrote that “As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer
noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, ‘Moses made the waters recede, but
he had help.’ Obama apparently works alone.” 
This piece not only ran in our nation’s capital but was also picked up
by papers in at least half of the states across the nation according to a quick
Google News search. 
The following chart shows that a disproportionate number of these
states were in areas that are too-close-to-call based on recent poll
data, with more than a third being Toss Ups and only about a quarter
qualifying as solid Democrat or Republican states this time around:

This opinion article was then followed by a number of feature pieces that
flickered on televisions across the nation, including this piece from Fox News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsxLlVXysWU  Watch this one closely, because between
the Krauthammer article and this brief Fox News story, we have all of the
out-of-context sound bites needed to concoct a smear ad of the worst kind. 

But first the GOP set the stage with a more innocent claim
that Obama was a “celebrity,” while operatives began making a few slips of the
tongue by calling him the “presumptuous nominee” rather than the standard
“presumptive nominee.”  The McCain
Campaign’s next step was to run ads comparing Senator Obama to Britney Spears
and Paris Hilton; and then in the past few days, the blogosphere has become
riveted by the most vicious ad of all.  We
will call it the Red Sea Swiftboat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8

In it, Senator Obama is presented as a bizarre kind of
replacement messiah.  As Mara Vanderslice
wrote on BeliefNet this past Saturday,

Or, as our own Eric Sapp describes it,

So that is the background about recent media coverage of
Obama’s “vanity” and the McCain campaign’s use of that concept to deem him a
“celebrity,” as if Senator Obama is too good to be true and so he must have
been created by Hollywood like these other narcissistic public figures (whom the
Republicans represent as shallow, which is the key here because it allows the
GOP to tie in Obama’s supposed “inexperience” in the same trope).  I now want to make two simple claims about the Republican Machine’s attempted Red Sea Swiftboating of
Barack Obama.  First, the
McCain campaign is spreading lies by issuing this advertisement.  These blatant misrepresentations must be explained fully within their contexts in order to restore fairness to this discussion.  Second, the
GOP is attempting to attack Obama’s strengths as a leader, thus trying to
undermine him where he is best in order to distract the public from where the
Republican Party is currently worst.

First, the quotes that are being used in this advertisement
– and which were used in the original Fox News feature from which it draws its
inspiration – were taken out of context and used as a subtext for a pretext.  In other words, by removing these statements
by Senator Obama and situating them in this ad as they did, the McCain campaign
makes false claims about the Democratic candidate and misrepresents his words
in order to create a falsified image of Obama as vainglorious.

The first instance is as follows:

What amazes me about this example is that it comes from
Obama’s conviction in the Horatio Alger, up-by-the-bootstraps American
individualism which Republicans usually celebrate.  Here is the original text from the speech,
which was delivered on Super Tuesday:

Although the Democrats have all too often allowed this idea
to be monopolized by Republicans in recent years, I find it heartening to hear
a political candidate assert something along these lines as Senator Obama has –
and I’m paraphrasing the idea here – that “We should expect people to be good
enough to lift themselves up by their bootstraps; but the problem is that some
folks don’t even have boots and, when that happens, we should expect America to
be better than that too.”

Regardless, I think it is clear that this statement is much
more democratic and much more rooted in the American Dream than in some
uprooting of our country’s fundamental principles and systems.  Obama has never called for a revolution that
is antithetical to our values, but this is what the ad implies through its
decontextualization of these lines from the original speech as well as through
the doctored photos that provide such exaggerated imagery of maddened crowds. 

Second, let’s turn to the following quote:

This quotation originally appeared on the blog for the
Washington Post a few days ago.  First of
all, no known tape exists, so we are only dealing in the collective selective
memory here of what was said, how it was said, and how it was meant.  Even so, the GOP still misrepresents this
quote.  As the blog originally reported, Obama
was speaking to the fact that during his trip to Berlin, he had witnessed how

Another source on site explained that Obama’s quote ran more along these
lines: “It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the
crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have
just become a symbol.”  Instead of quibbling over what the various quotes might mean
in terms of Obama’s innermost thoughts, we must first acknowledge that none of
the quotes stated that “I have become a symbol of America returning to our best
traditions,” as the GOP ad claimed. 
Rather, the McCain Campaign purposefully excluded the three words “of
the possibility” from their version of the quote in order to make Obama seem
more presumptuous and arrogant.
These conveniently removed words make all the difference in the way
that Obama thinks of his candidacy; it is obvious that he knows that
this is far from over.

Yet here is
the important point: we are living during a special historic moment in which a
major party is placing an African-American at the top of the ballot for the
first time in our history. And it is okay to recognize that fact.  No matter what happens this November, our
grandchildren will read about this election in histories we cannot yet imagine
– and they will ask us what it was like to live during this time.  How could that not lead all of us, regardless
of our race, religion, or region, to see Obama’s candidacy, too, as at least some
small symbol of the possibility that exists within the idea of America – both
what this nation is, as well as what it should be all about?  If
John McCain’s heroism during Vietnam is a
symbol of what is right with America – and it most certainly is an
exemplary
and beautiful story of perseverance, courage, and self-sacrifice for
this great country –
then why can Barack Obama’s life not also be a metaphor for the
greatness of
not only what Americans, but what America as a nation, can do?  While
Senator Obama will only refer to this efforts as a symbol of the
possibility for America's return from the brink of the all-too-blind
arrogance that has evinced itself over recent years, I would argue that
his very candidacy is symbolic as well. 

Now, this is not only about race.  It is also about having the child of a single
parent mother running for president.  It
is about having that same presidential candidate be the son of a man who was
born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding
goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.  It is about a young attorney turning down the
big money of the corporate law firms to serve his community.  It is about the fact that rather than having
such a decision prevent him from ever having the chance to become president, his
grassroots, door-to-door approach now makes his candidacy one of the most
exciting this country has seen in decades. 
It is also about all of those things.

And yet it is okay to acknowledge that Obama’s candidacy
returns us to our roots, to our democratic ideals in which all men are truly
created equal, and so we must see the symbolism of the Obama candidacy as truly
historic in nature.  He is the first
African-American candidate for a major party, which is symbolic in the same
sense that we should remember Fayetteville, North Carolina, native Hiram Revels
who became the first African-American US Senator on February
25, 1870, and thus changed the idea of what made a US Senator (even for
too short of a time, with the end of Reconstruction). 

It is also okay to recognize how this moves us forward as a
nation as well, considering how our society is all too often still defined by, divided
over, and even at moments defiant about our different skin tones.   It is okay to recognize that this candidacy is a
mighty step for a nation that was divided up 143 years ago by civil war and divided
by Jim Crow just forty-three years ago. 
All of this is ours: the complexity and the incongruity and the
difficulty of American race relations, both the horrific and
hate-filled history we have gratefully put
to rest and moved beyond in terms of a great corpus of policies and
practices, and the same history
that we must remember in order to understand each other, and ourselves,
more fully as imperfect and human.  By assuming that spirit of heart, and
that attitude of mind, history leads us to become more discerning, more
sensitive to our own faults and our shared humanity.  To understand the
significance of what that means in the context of this historic
candidacy that is a sincerely humbling thing when we consider the great
and splendid deeds, and the scarcely utterable sins, of the men and
women who have come before us.

If we cannot have renewed discussions about
all of this and more in the context of this election, when
the first
major African-American candidate is campaigning for the presidency,
when will
we?  When we broach these topics humbly, we find that it is better than
okay to acknowledge the historic nature of this election. 
When
we approach each other genuinely in this way, we begin to see those
"best traditions" of the people's relationships with American democracy
in their truest, most personal form.  These discussions about the
significance of having an African-American candidate are worth celebrating, whether you plan on voting for Senator Obama or
not.  And it is worth celebrating even if
you cannot vote for him because, rather having been born in America, your first
breaths occurred in Berlin, a city that itself was divided in its own way as
recently as twenty years ago. 

Yet it is
also important not to get caught up in the idea of the great historical drift
of which many Democrats may feel like they are now a part.  To do so misses the point entirely and fails
to acknowledge some of the greatest meanings held in being a part of making
history.  As this story unfolds, so much
is happening at once that the very events become irreducible and inexplicable just as soon as they are experienced.  From
the way words flowing from behind a podium impact every
audience member in different ways to how the personal exchanges on
street
corners across the country are influencing the opinions and ideas of
real-world individuals every
single day from now until November, all you can do is enjoy being a
part of
it because you never really know what is going to happen next.  It is
the same with the inscrutability of the Lord's plans.  Because the
wondrous path of history is simply that: the fulfillment of God's will
in ways and in workings that none of us can ever possibly understand
fully.

This is not to say that the outcome of Obama's candidacy is pre-ordained to be a success just because it is already historic.  Rather, it is quite the opposite; and we
will come back to that in a moment, with a particular focus on how thinking about God's plans should influence our thinking about this election.  But first let us look at the final
quote from the McCain advertisement.  It is one of the most egregious
examples of how the GOP is misrepresenting
Barack Obama in this ad:

NARRATOR: He can do
no wrong.

CBS NEWS
CORRESPONDENT LARA LOGAN: Do you have any doubts?

 

OBAMA: Never.

While that may seem simple enough (and so straightforward
that its meaning would apparently be difficult to distort), but just take a
moment to read and watch this from CBS News:

Lara Logan: "Okay, last question: There is a
perception that you lack experience in world affairs."





Senator Obama: "Right."





Logan:
"Is this trip partly aimed at overcoming that concern, that, you know,
there are doubts among some Americans that you could lead the country at war as
commander in chief from day one?"





Obama: "You know, the
interesting thing is that the people who are very experienced in foreign
affairs, I don't think have those thoughts. The troops that I've been meeting
with over the last several days, they don't seem to have those doubts. The
objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like
President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I
expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years.





"It's important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I
start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and
concerns are, because one of the shifts in foreign policy that I want to
execute as president is giving the world a clear message that America intends
to continue to show leadership, but our style of leadership is going to be less
unilateral, that we're going to see our role as building partnerships around
the world that are of mutual interest to the parties involved. And I think this
gives me a head start in that process."





Logan:
"Do you have any doubts?"

Obama: "Never."

Text: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/20/ftn/main4275864_page2.shtml

Video: http://www.videosift.com/video/Lara-Logan-Interviews-Barack-Obama-in-Afghanistan

Clearly, Senator Obama was not stating that he never has any
doubts under any circumstances.  He never
even pretended to be an expert in foreign policy.  He was certainly not claiming to be someone
who can do no wrong.  Rather, Obama’s response to Logan’s questioning involved whether he had
any doubts that he could lead the nation as commander in chief.  Logan
had stated that “there are doubts among some Americans that you could lead
the country at war as commander in chief from day one,” and we can assume that
every American would want the person in charge of the nation’s defense and
security never to have doubts that he could protect them.  As Senator Obama posited in his response, the
leaders of other countries and those with all kinds of experience in foreign
affairs never had those kinds of doubts while they went about their daily business; and neither was this an issue amongst the troops.  Of course Obama would answer Logan’s
question by saying that he never doubts his own capabilities to be up to the
job of President of the United
States.  The real question involves why he is confident that his approach will prove successful once he has the chance to back up his confident responses with actions.

You see, the real difference is the way in which Obama has proposed
that he would accomplish this goal compared to America’s leadership over the past
four years.  Obama calls for
relationships, compromise, mutual understanding, and partnerships.  And this is why, when we really dig deep
enough, we begin to realize that the advertisement is not only an attack
against the quiet, powerful confidence that makes for one of Obama’s greatest
attributes, both on the campaign and potentially in the White House.  In true Swift Boat fashion, this is also a
way of simultaneously obscuring the Republicans’ greatest weakness for this particular
election.  Another sin of the same order
as vanity is hubris, the Bush Administration’s world-renowned penchant for
declaring that “You are either with us or against us,” particularly in the
context of preemptive war.

As Professor Andrew J. Bacevich so compellingly argues in
his new introduction to the 2008 reprint of The
Irony of American History (a new version which I highly recommend to you), this attitude towards foreign affairs
– and the corresponding Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare – were both
discussed long ago by one of Barack Obama’s favorite philosophers, Reinhold
Niebuhr.  Before continuing, here are a few of the
candidate’s own words on the great theologian’s writings:

These words are particularly fitting when discussing the
Bush Administration’s foreign policy (by going it alone against the
vague specter of “terrorism”) when compared to the approach Barack Obama has
proposed (by leading through partnerships with allies).  Here are a few words from the closing paragraphs of Niebuhr's Irony of American History that directly relate:

Likewise, Niebuhr's words about the American battle against
the Soviets could also be applied to the current struggle against Muslim
extremists.  Consider the following, which also comes from that same passage, in the context of both conflicts:

And yet in another sense, these words prove cautionary for
Democrats too, especially when we begin to feel as if we are caught in the great tide of
history.  They give us pause just in case we might be tempted to feel that God is on our side rather than having our daily work evince that we are truly seeking His purposes.  At those times when the
symbolic and historic nature of this campaign threatens to supersede the very real sacrifices
that must be made in running the course, a sudden shock like the Red Sea
Swiftboating can afford us the chance to reflect on how everyone sees this election in their own ways, while almost always viewing themselves in the right. As Christians, we are called to understand things differently by praying that it be thy will, not mine, Lord.  So rather than seeing our side as having an exclusive claim to what is right for America, the best we can do is reach out to our neighbors, transcend stereotypes and barriers, and begin to engage in a more true democracy, with this campaign season being only the beginning of how we find new ways to serve.

As Democrats who believe that the Red Sea Swiftboating is a kind of dirty campaign tactic that is unfair and
uncalled for, it also provides us with an opportunity to remember what this effort is
all about.  Democrats
can take the high road in instances like these and, in so
doing, be humble about the greatness of the effort of which they are
now a
part.  As Christians who are working for Obama, we must be the first to look towards this nobler mission by seeking humility
and not hubris throughout each day of the months to come.  This very
much fits with the Gospel teachings and it also fits with how we should
deal with attacks like the Red Sea Swiftboating.  This campaign will truly only be won through hard work and outreach
to every single voter.  And when we are out there registering voters, let us truly listen as well and relish in the new connections that democracy affords. 

In a similar fashion, we must also pursue the truth when faced
with misconstrued and misinformed facts.  We should spread the word about how the McCain Campaign has lied about Obama and taken his words out of context.  As long as the GOP keeps falsifying the record and making
claims that show nothing but their own hubris, Obama will be doing well.  So long as the Obama campaign continues to
stress collaboration, partnerships, and the many great acts of human
interaction that transcend all kinds of barriers – whether in the halls of
power in foreign lands or within communities in local neighborhoods – we will be doing good, too.  And may it also be the same in our everyday efforts on behalf of our candidate and his beliefs, all of which is only fitting in the spirit of this historic
campaign.