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Former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and Barack Obama supporter Dick Harpootlian said today that Bill Clinton was like Lee Atwater in how he was using race to try to manipulate presidential politics. Asked by CNN's Jessica Yellin what he thought of that, his answer made me think of an old law school adage: he that doth not deny confirms. Clinton proceeded to go on a rant lasting several minutes about how the media was "stealing" the election from South Carolina voters, none of which had shown up to ask him anything about Lee Atwater or racial politics. He chastised Yellin for pursuing her own agenda and said that the only reason that they were even talking about the comment is because they (read: the media) wanted to talk about it. He didn't mention that few if any of the people at the campaign event likely even knew that he had been compared to Atwater. It seems unlikely that no one in an audience fully aware of the comment would ask about it.
Let's back up for a moment... okay, okay, two decades but the history lesson will be over quick. Lee Atwater was the adviser who came up in the rough and tumble, racial politics of South Carolina that dug up the information that Michael Dukakis had let out on furlough a fellow named William R. Horton. Mr. Horton was a convicted murderer doing life without parole and, whilst on furlough, he committed armed robbery and rape. Lee Atwater turned William Horton into Willie Horton, the wild-eyed black felon asking, to take a page out of Mel Brooks' book, "Where's all the white womens at?" It was this negative black stereotype that Atwater blew up larger than life and then went negative on Dukakis with, absolutely eviscerating him. Now that you know Willie and Lee's part of the story, let's get back to Slick Willie's interpretation of Atwater.
Bill Clinton knows racial politics. He was the boy from Hope, Arkansas, the segregated town in the South that would give birth to one President as well as another serious presidential contender, Mike Huckabee. Bill Clinton knows how white people think, particularly post-WWII white people all over this country, particularly in the South. Clinton's Atwater move, just like everything else about him, has been slick and smooth. First he sent surrogates like Bill Shaheen out to remind everyone that Barack Obama experimented with drugs and to wonder aloud whether he sold them. Mission number one accomplished: label Barack Obama with the negative stereotype that black men face every single day and that Clinton claimed he understood and empathized with: that they are a walking felony machine, smoking crack and slinging it. Then they sent a successful black man out to hammer the attack home: "...while Hillary Clinton was out working on issues that matter to black people, Barack Obama was down in the neighborhood... I ain't gonna say what he was doin', but he talks about it in his book." Then Hillary made the oh-so-astute observation that while Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspirational leader, the civil rights movement wasn't going anywhere until Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped in and took the reins. All of this has been calculated since the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses where the Clintons found out, much to their chagrin, that white people weren't afraid to vote for a black candidate for president like they used to be.
Barack Obama was transcending race from the beginning of his campaign all the way through his decisive win in the Iowa caucuses. He wasn't mentioning he was black, nobody else was mentioning he was black. America had gotten over its self-flagellating obsession with race. Then in rode the Clintons. From that juncture they have made it a point to highlight both through their surrogates as well as through Bill and Hillary's own "complimentary" comments about his skin tone that Barack Obama is a black man. Their current theory is that if they can put an end to Obama transcending the race issue by addressing the change needed in this country and identifying himself as the candidate that can bring that change, they will win. If they can stuff him back under the glass ceiling that exists for any presidential candidate considered "black" by the voting public like Al Sharpton, they can win. They will alienate and give up the 13% of African-American votes if that means they can re-open the fault lines of race that Obama had closed when he was thrashing Clinton and make him "that black candidate" that Obama worked so hard to not be labeled as. Bill and Hillary both know that Edwards ceased to be a threat long ago and that if they can hitch Obama's wagon to the African-American star, they can sail to the nomination with the white vote.
It's about time that someone called Bill Clinton out on this. Bill Clinton was called "the first black president" by author Toni Morrison. Apparently he's viewing Obama's candidacy as the championship fight and he wants to retain his title. The Clintons have given lip service to Martin Luther King Jr's dream this entire campaign, but when it comes down to the practicality of it, they're not interested. They don't want Barack Obama to be judged by the content of his character, they want him to be judged by the color of his skin. They are betraying King's dream with polite platitudes and reminding every voter whose ear they can bend that Barack Obama is a black man that used to work in the slums and experimented with drugs. His policy ideas don't matter. His leadership abilities don't matter. His judgment doesn't matter. All that matters is that he is one of two obstacles left between Hillary having the power she's always dreamed of having and Bill having the power he enjoyed immensely for eight years returned to him. If you'll excuse me, I need to go shower. The Clintons' efforts to smother idealism and bipartisanship in its crib has left me feeling extremely dirty.
