McCain: Obama Not an Arab

I sent this clip to a friend in Dubai to put on display the craziness of the American campaign trail, especially as Barack Obama (by all empirical impressions) seems to be pulling away with the election.

The woman in the clip (not) asking the question was what at first really struck me as something symptomatic of the ignorance and fear emerging as the likelihood of an Obama victory increases.

My friend in Dubai dismissed the woman altogether in his response to me (perhaps as if it represented a question he expected an American to ask from his particular disposition). Instead my friend focused on what McCain said in response to the claim that Obama is an Arab, noting the no ma'am. he's a decent family man, a citizen and suggesting that the two (being an Arab and a decent, family man, a citizen) are presumably incompatible.

I wrote my friend back to defend McCain (however unlikely that scenario was to become for me) and to clear up that I didn't actually think McCain was equating Arabs with indecency, aversions to family, and alien status.

But what's glaring here (and my friend was quick to point this out as well) is that if American politicians are trying to win the hearts and minds of moderate Arabs, Muslims, and the world then shouldn't a response to this question be "he's not an Arab, but so what if he was?"

The knee jerk American reaction might be to say, well, it's absolutely not politically palatable for a candidate for office in the 21st century to say 'it's okay to be an Arab', but aren't we missing a major opportunity to educate our most intolerant or simply ignorant neighbors? And although it's becoming news now that the rednecks of America are getting desperate about an Obama presidency, this isn't just a John McCain problem. It was a Barack Obama problem earlier in the campaign when he had to clarify that he was not Arab or Muslim and distanced himself accordingly. What about all this talk of a new day?

Meanwhile, I've got to tell my friend in Dubai that while some of our country has the basic human intelligence to judge people individually, our politicians can't afford to appeal to the better angels of collective our nature.