Political Prose

Rule no. 1 of political campaigning: Embrace xenophobic patriotism

According to leaked emails, Clinton strategist Mark Penn advised his candidate to paint Obama as unpatriotic. McCain was apparently listening.


Political strategists think alike, and their Machiavellian mindset leads them without fail to the low road of branding their opponent as unpatriotic, un-American, and vaguely French. That's the takeaway from leaked emails by Mark Penn, former top strategist of the Clinton campaign, who it turns out suggested an uber-patriotic approach to Clinton that the McCain camp has taken up, with gusto, in the last several weeks of the presidential campaign.

The New York Times has an excerpt from a soon-to-be-published article in The Atlantic, which includes hundreds of leaked emails from the Clinton campaign. Here is one choice bit of Penn advice:

All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.

Save it for 2050. … Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America American to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back …

Let’s explicitly own "American" in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds.

McCain's campaign seems to be following this script line by line. His campaign has adopted a new slogan, "Country First," and his campaign ads and statements in recent weeks — especially since Obama's Berlin speech — have highlighted Obama's celebrity appeal to foreigners, and accused the Illinois senator of being unpatriotic.

Things get complicated by the race issue. For example, in an ABC News interview after Obama's Berlin speech, one McCain supporter made a point of mentioning how McCain was "all-American" and "one of us." Those could be references to Obama's lack of patriotism — or they could be code words for race. 

Intentionally or not, McCain's current line of attack strikes both of these lightning rods. His strategists, like Penn, know that "international" and "American" are mutually exclusive terms in this country's politics — even if trends of globalization mean that, in the "real world," American and global interests look increasingly alike.

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Blog

The Jewel of Medina


“All this saddens me. Literature moves civilizations forward, and Islam is no exception.”

—Asra Nomani decries the indefinite postponement of the publication of Sherry Jones’ novel, The Jewel of Medina, which was originally slated for publication on August 12th.  The novel — ostensibly the first in a two-book, $100,000 deal with Random House — portrays the life of A’isha, who is typically characterized as the prophet of Islam Muhammad’s favorite wife.  The novel charts A’isha’s life from her engagement to the Prophet Muhammad at age six up through his death. 

Nomani, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, argues that Random House cancelled the novel’s upcoming publication due to fears that Jones’ book would instigate an upheaval similar to that caused by Sir Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.  Sir Salman’s 1988 novel was condemned as blasphemous, and Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a non-binding legal opinion, or fatwa, urging the execution of Sir Salman. Nomani penned an opinion piece this past week in The Wall Street Journal that laid the blame for the book’s cancellation on Denise Spellburg, Associate Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.  Spellburg served as a consulting historian and was asked to comment on the book by Random House.

Defending herself against accusations that she derailed the publication of The Jewel of Medina, Denise Spellburg wrote in The Wall Street Journal:
 

 

As a historian invited to "comment" on the book by its Random House editor at the author’s express request, I objected strenuously to the claim that "The Jewel of Medina" was "extensively researched," as stated on the book jacket. As an expert on Aisha’s life, I felt it was my professional responsibility to counter this novel’s fallacious representation of a very real woman’s life. The author and the press brought me into a process, and I used my scholarly expertise to assess the novel. It was in that same professional capacity that I felt it my duty to warn the press of the novel’s potential to provoke anger among some Muslims.

Random House neutrally insists that the decision was made "for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.”

Readers will have to judge the work for themselves. The only excerpt currently available includes Jones’ portrayal of the consummation of A’isha’s marriage to the Prophet Muhammad: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion’s sting…”

It may be that this feat of fictional imagineering may have almost nothing in common, save for its foray into the politically and religiously sensitive, with Sir Salman’s novel.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

personal stories. global issues.