The North Carolina Republican Party is showing an ad that John McCain and an array of Democrats have denounced. Why? It attacks two Democratic candidates for having endorsed Barack Obama, who, the ad says, is too extreme for North Carolina, having had Rev. Wright as a spiritual mentor for twenty years. It’s remarkable that anyone thinks this is dirty politics. Rev. Wright and his extreme views have been in the news for weeks. Barack Obama has kept his own views well hidden; people are quite reasonably looking at his association with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and others who might provide a clue about his own beliefs and values. Imagine that John McCain had been attending a church for twenty years whose pastor made openly racist remarks from the pulpit. Would any Democrat think it was unacceptable to point that out? Surely not—despite the fact that, in McCain’s case, we would have a great deal of information about his own views from his public statements and actions, something we lack for Obama.
Many Republicans are disgusted at McCain’s denunciation of the ad. If McCain were Machiavellian, however, he might do exactly this. One of Michelle Malkin’s commenters puts it well:
The Right will do the job while McCain tut tuts with plausible deniability and reaps the benefits of the country being educated about the Obamaphenoma’s truths.
I don’t think McCain is doing this intentionally, but, then again, if he were doing it well, I wouldn’t, would I?
UPDATE: Rev. Wright in context.
