Republicans make Barack Obama the issue

AMERICAN economy is tanking. Gasoline prices have tripled in the last seven years. Food prices have skyrocketed. Homes are foreclosing everywhere. Iraq war remains immensely unpopular, as does the Republican President Bush. In fact, the Republican brand is so damaged that Republican senators and congressmen seeking reelection have been advised by strategists to distance themselves from their own party!
Republican presumptive nominee Senator John McCain is a huge supporter of President Bush's Iraq, tax and economic policies. Yet, in a recent Newsweek poll, McCain has closed the gap with Barack Obama from 15% in June to 3% now. So, what is going on?
Some of it can be explained away due to Obama's shifting of positions from the left to the center, which is necessary to win the general election. Obama's reversal on FISA legislation which provides immunity to telecom companies that spied on unsuspecting citizens, his support for faith-based initiatives and the Supreme Court's overturning of Washington DC's gun control laws, his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing, and his nebulous positions on late term abortions have dismayed those on the left and many independents.
Last month Obama was leading McCain among independent voters, 48% to 36%. This month McCain leads Obama 41% to 34%.
With the Republicans so unpopular, Obama should be leading McCain by 20-30%, experts say. The reason he is not is because of a deliberate Republican strategy of not running on issues which are sure losers for them, but making Barack Obama the issue.
Their line of attack is simple -- Obama is an unknown. He is too exotic, a half-breed. He and his heritage are too close to Islam, America's global enemy. His patriotism is suspect. Terrorists would celebrate his election. Americans cannot hand over the reigns of this great nation to a potential fifth columnist!
In spite of Obama's well publicised Rev. Wright controversy, internet rumour mills have been churning out nonstop falsehoods that Obama is a Muslim. The same Newsweek poll found that 39% of the Americans believe that Obama attended an Islamic school, a madrassa, in Indonesia (he did not), 26% believe that he was brought up as a Muslim by his Muslim Indonesian step-father (he was brought up as a Christian by his mother and maternal grandparents), 12% belive that he took his oath of office by placing his hands on the Qur'an (he used the Bible) and 12% of Americans believe that Obama is a practicing Muslim (he is a devout Christian).
Such misconceptions do not happen by accidents. Republicans and their rightwing fringe have worked very hard to misinform the Americans about who Barack Obama really is.
As if the Republican rightwing propaganda was not bad enough, in its latest issue The New Yorker magazine featured a cover cartoon involving Barack and Michelle Obama that seemed to validate all the rightwing rumours.
The cartoon shows the Obamas standing in the Oval Office in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. A picture of Osama bin Laden hangs over the mantelpiece. Obama, wearing sandals, a dishdasha robe and turban, is giving his wife a "fist bump" -- a hip greeting that one Fox News commentator dubbed "terrorist fist jab." Michelle Obama, in military fatigues, has an Afro hairstyle reminiscent of the communist activist of the 1970s, Angela Davis, over her shoulder and a bandolier of ammunition strung across her chest.
The New Yorker defended the cartoon by saying that it was a satire, "a composite parody of unfounded smears against the Illinois senator." A satire is stretching the truth. For example, if someone has big ears, a satirical cartoon exaggerates it. If someone has a long lose, a satirist would stretch it Pinocchio-like. A satire does not peddle falsehoods.
To depict Obama in a Muslim garb when he is a Christian, to show an American flag burning in his fire place when rightwing thugs have questioned Obama's patriotism, to show his "feisty" wife as a Black Panther, and to hang a portrait of Osama Bin Laden on his mantle when Obama-haters accuse him of being a terrorist-sympathiser, is no satire. It is lending credence to all the malicious smear campaigns.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr Obama, said: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create." "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree," he said in a statement. To their credit, the campaign of John McCain said it also deplored the cartoon. "We completely agree with the Obama campaign that it is tasteless and offensive," Tucker Bounds, a spokesman, said.
So a prestigious magazine, ironically which has previously supported Obama's candidacy, has just associated the deadly words and expressions such as "Muslim," "Osama Bin Laden," "American flag-burning," "unpatriotic" and "terrorist-sympathiser" in a cover cartoon about Barrack Obama.
Whether Americans dismiss these depictions as falsehoods, or use these to reinforce their prejudice about Obama's unsuitability to hold the office of the nation's chief executive, we shall have to wait to find out until the next Newsweek poll.

Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Rhodes Scholar and a Daily Star columnist.