Making Issues of Non-Issues

The current race for the White House began much earlier than previous races and for good reason. Both of the major parties are in a desperate bid to get into the White House now that the incumbent George W. Bush will no longer be eligable to run for a third term. Some candidates have been vocalizing their candidacy for years now while others were what could only be termed as "Johnny-come-lately's". With a race running as long as it has, it's no wonder that some aspects of it are slowly wearing down the resolve of those running while it is causing others to revert to dirty tactics to try and convince people that one candidate is better than the other. The current target that's in the crosshairs appears to be current Democratic front runner Barrack Obama. Now whether you are a supporter of Obama or not, I believe that what he is currently being subjected to is a bit much.

What's been going on? Well, earlier this month, a photo was released to the press (which is included with this blog) which shows Obama wrapped in the garb of a Kenyan elder which he donned on a visit to the country some time back. Now Obama is certainly not the first candidate to wear the clothes of the people from another country and certainly won't be the last but the issue that is being raised by this picture is one of utter childishness and what can only border on stupidity and ignorance. What some have intimated is that this photo is evidence that Obama has "secret ties" to the Muslim community and that these ties are for devious purposes. Forget the fact that he has spoken out against the current war in Iraq or that he immediately came out and explained what the context of the picture was. The seed of doubt was planted in the heads of many and unfortunately, this little picture is going to paint a whole new portrait. That too an unfair portrait.

And the release of the photo wasn't the only type of subversion being attempted by opponents of Obama. Yesterday at a rally for Republican frontrunner John McCain, conservative talk radio host Bill Cunningham attempted to rile up the audience by providing an introduction for McCain which included disparaging remarks against his opponents on the Democratic side and in which he used Obama's full name which included the middle name Hussein. Now McCain of course was not present at that time and immediately apologized for any comments made by Cunningham during his introduction (which I feel was a classy move on his part) but the seed of doubt was once again cast. I'm sure that when Obama was named, his family didn't think ahead thirty-plus years and assume that Hussein would be associated with a former dictator in a country our nation would be at war with just when young Barrack would be making a run for the presidency. It was serendipitous and a case of unfortunate timing. Does it mean again that Obama has "secret sympathies" for Muslim people? Not really, but then again that's not what people tend to remember.

Unfortunately in our attention deficient world, sound bites rule our lives. We care more about quantity versus quality at times and the more news that we can fit in our heads the better it is. Often times we'll only get to hear part of the issue and in cases like this, we see pictures of Obama out of context wearing a turban and hear that his middle name is Hussein and assume that he's a Muslim sympathizer right? That being the case, were I to simply tell someone that John McCain was a former prisoner of war of Vietnam during that war, would it be fair to assume that McCain's only interest during his presidency would be to re-engage in war with Vietnam? Would it be fair to assume that he'd want to bomb the country back to the stone age due to his mistreatment during his time as a POW? No. What about Hillary Clinton? I find it funny that during Bill Clinton's first term, people joked that she was secretly running the country by telling Bill what to do. Now people are worried that if Hillary becomes the next president, Bill will be running the show from behind the curtains. Is that the case? Probably not but it's a fair thing to assume right?

I wish the media and candidates would take a page from what McCain did yesterday and take action to attempt to at least run a fair campaign. There's still a while before the elections in November and I for one would like to hear more on how the candidates plan for our country rather than constantly defending themselves against accusations being leveled against them left and right. I'm more interested in finding out what the plans for our nation for the future are rather than worrying whether or not Obama likes to dress in turbans regularly. That's not the issue; the issue is our country and how these candidates propose to lead us. I'm not interested in childish name-calling or false accusations. I know that candidates (all of them) are far from perfect but that's what comes from being human. I don't expect them to be infallible, but I also am not interested in robots. Let's keep it clean huh?