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AS THE nominees lack only the formal anointing of their respective political conventions, thoughts here in the United States turn to the presidential campaign. If the pattern of the past two such campaigns holds, Democrats will emphasise policy and run a campaign of ideas, while Republicans will run a campaign of personalities, much of it in the form of innuendo and half-truths. One of John Kerry’s mistakes, four years ago, was in not responding directly and forcefully to character assassination by the Republicans.
John McCain’s cohort has begun painting Barack Obama as a mere celebrity figure, invoking the names of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in conjunction with him. It is not the usual indictment for an academic, and seems to rest on little more than the fact that Senator Obama draws crowds in a way that Senator McCain does not. But it is part of an effort to brand Senator Obama as weak, ineffective, and somehow not a standard-issue American—not “one of us”.
Senator Obama’s campaign has responded by suggesting that there is a touch of racial innuendo buried in this, a charge to which the McCain campaign has reacted with the angry complaint that Senator Obama is “playing the race card”. One suspects that their irritation arises from being challenged on this ploy so early in the process.
But Senator Obama also faces a deeper rhetorical challenge in this campaign. For the past 12 years or so, political discourse in the United States has been poisonous. Advertisements designed to create distrust and arouse fear and anger have proved very successful in turning elections.
Senator Obama, so far, has maintained a forward-looking rhetoric, short on specifics but long on hope, including the hope of getting past the factionalism that has made US politics such a dispiriting spectacle. The challenge will be to preserve this rhetoric while also responding bluntly to Republican efforts to paint him as weak and ineffective.
The prospect of success, however, lies with the times as well as with the speaker. Rhetoric can help us move beyond our problems only when we have reached a point where we begin to be ready for it. We shall soon find out whether the miseries of the Bush administration have made us recognise the evil of poisoning the wells of discourse.
Senator Obama, then, will have to find ways to push back against character assassination and still get the electorate to look towards the possibility of a more co-operative and constructive future. It will not be easy to play the Republican game without getting trapped by it — but this may be the moment when it can be done.
Writing this just as the Lambeth Conference winds down, I cannot help but observe that intra-Anglican discourse and politics seem equally poisoned. What I do not see is evidence either that we are ready for this to change, or that our leaders are employing a rhetoric that might help the process.
The Revd Dr L. William Countryman is Professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.
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