THE COLUMN: The Right and the wrong

By Steve Burgess

Many Canadians have a little money set aside in an RRSP, which is nice, except that it used to be a lot of money. All over North America, investment portfolios are draining like bathtubs. Real-estate values are turning three-bedroom homes into the financial equivalent of backyard toolsheds. With all that wealth disappearing around the world, it would be nice to think that the world might be getting something in exchange. I hope we are. Next Tuesday, we might be getting Barack Obama.

No doubt about it, the economic meltdown has been good news for the U.S. presidential campaign of the Democratic candidate. Senator John McCain was doing surprisingly well until Lehman Brothers Bank collapsed and Wall Street tanked. Suddenly, American voters remembered that McCain was a Republican, just like the Oval Office doofus who fiddled while the stock market burned. Obama started putting daylight between himself and his opponent and (so far) hasn’t looked back.

So, as your silver disappears, there may yet be a silver lining: Our collective misfortunes are Barack Obama’s good fortune. It may be cynical to cheer for economic disaster just to boost the political fortunes of a favourite candidate, but I’m paying my dues here — my own brave little RRSP has been having limbs amputated since the beginning of the year. Thanks to the markets, I’ve made my political contribution to the Obama campaign. Next Tuesday, I want some payoff.

Besides, if it’s cynical to cheer an economic downturn for political reasons, it’s only because the bad financial news has helped to defeat an even greater cynicism. Once again in a U.S. election campaign, the Republicans have attempted to employ the cheap smear tactics that worked so well for George W. Bush, and his daddy, too. Twenty years ago, Bush Sr. ran an ugly, race-baiting campaign against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. Four years ago, the Republicans ran a smear campaign that made unsubstantiated allegations about the war record of Senator John Kerry. In fact, the Bush family’s political trolls have launched vicious smears against anyone who ever criticized them or stood in the way of their plans. And, time and again, they have proved that these tactics work like a voodoo charm. Under different circumstances, they might have worked this time, too. But, thanks to the overriding economic story, this year the Republican mud has failed to stick.

Not that the party has stopped throwing it. A Republican named Floyd Brown — the same man who once masterminded the sleazy race-baiting ads for Bush Sr. — this time put together an ad that asked: “Was Barack Obama ever a Muslim?” Meanwhile, McCain and his attack moose, Sarah Palin, have been busily trying to link Obama with William Ayers, a Chicago university professor who was involved in domestic terrorism 40 years ago and once sat on a community board with Obama.

Last week, the lengths to which Republicans will go was demonstrated in the most bizarre fashion yet. In Pittsburgh, 20-year-old McCain worker Ashley Todd claimed to have been attacked by a black Obama supporter who carved the letter ‘B’ on her face. It was there, all right: a big, nasty, red ‘B.’ Her attacker was quickly apprehended. Her name was Ashley Todd. She had carved that letter herself. Perhaps the fact that the ‘B’ was carved backward was meant to indicate her attacker was dyslexic — or at least unfamiliar with the tricks a bathroom mirror can play. The best comment about the incident came from a CNN pundit: “Next time, use the ‘O’.”

One screwed-up young woman does not represent the Republican Party. But, these days it seems, right-wing radio hosts do. They ran with the story like Olympic sprinters, just as they did with another bogus story just prior to that one, which falsely claimed Michelle Obama put herself up at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York and ordered lobster and caviar. People say politics is dirty and accuse both sides of slimy tactics, but media attempts at even-handedness disguise the fact that in the U.S., it’s the Republicans who have perfected the dark art of the political smear.

Then again, the playing field is not really level, and the Republicans do have a disadvantage in this race. Consider: When Sarah Palin wants to attack Obama, she must suggest that he’s a closet socialist who hangs around with terrorists, whereas when Tina Fey wants to poke fun at Palin, she just has to repeat the Alaska governor’s own statements word for word.

Things change quickly in politics — we’ve seen that all through this rollercoaster ride. McCain might still pull it off. But it’s hard to imagine.

Should Barack Obama win the presidency next Tuesday, as expected, it will be an historic event, an event most of us thought we’d never live to see. And the best part of this campaign has been how many people have almost forgotten about that angle. This has been a presidential campaign about two candidates, two parties, two schools of thought.

And as wonderful as it will be to witness this coming cultural and political breakthrough, I will be just as glad to see evidence that a political era has passed. A Barack Obama victory will be proof that, at least for now, the Slime Age has ended in America. I hope it won’t be just because people lost money on the stock market.