Up From Chicago

When Camp McCain says he's arrogant, they're playing to those who think he's another black man who doesn't know his place.

Uppity: adjective, informal—snobbish, arrogant or presumptuous

Collins Essential English Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Aug. 5, 2008--"Uppity" used to be the preferred term for Negroes who didn't know their place. There was a time when it was regularly applied to any number of black men and women who strived to be more than day laborers, nannies or sharecroppers.

The GOP, ever aware of the connotative power of words, has steered clear of the direct usage of that loaded term. When they speak of Barack Obama—a man in pursuit of the most lofty of prizes—they simply use the words that define the term. Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Obama's opponent, sensing an opening, launched a campaign ad last week, in which the underlying theme, "look at the uppity black man," will no doubt resonate with a certain segment of the audience. McCain's ad interspersed photos of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton—two icons of vapidity—with a smug-looking Obama surrounded by throngs of adoring white people (liberal Europeans).

Conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer summed up the sentiment that provided the basis for the McCain ad in a July 18 piece titled "The Audacity of Vanity," in which he criticized Obama for speaking at the Bradenburg Gate and ridiculed him as "a man of profoundly limited achievement." He went on to suggest: "For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is? We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when 'our planet began to heal.' As I recall—I'm no expert on this—Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas."

Suddenly, after eight years of George W. Bush, humility and achievement matter. Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

For now, the greater public doesn't appear to be buying it. In the latest national CNN poll, about the same percentage—one third—of respondents believed both Obama and McCain were arrogant.

The fact that the mainstream media has embraced the uppity-Obama storyline is further evidence of the right's ability to advance whatever preposterous storyline it chooses, despite its persistent whining about the liberal media.

Republicans have long been able to win races by doing a better job of negatively defining their opponents with coordinated media attacks. What the right does particularly well is not just framing the arguments but coordinating the response to the fallout.

When Obama suggested that McCain was attempting to make him seem different and scary, McCain and his supporters wailed that Obama was "playing the race card."

That term, of course, has become the de facto line of defense for whites who want to immediately end any uncomfortable conversations about race. "Are you calling me a racist? You're calling me a racist!"

Interestingly, calling someone a racist has become a worse offense than actually being one. And thus the media will allow McCain and his defenders to have it both ways—play to racial sensitivities and express mock horror than anyone would have the audacity to question their motives.

But, just so we're clear, this is not an argument that McCain is a racist. One of the most fascinating political speeches I personally witnessed came April 18, 2000, when McCain returned to South Carolina to apologize for his failure to denounce the Confederate flag during his primary battle with George W. Bush months earlier.

Standing before the conservative South Carolina Policy Council think tank, McCain said, "I should have done this earlier when an honest answer could have affected me personally. I did not do so for one reason alone. I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth."

I will never forget the looks of simmering rage on the faces of the nearly all-white crowd when he told them that his ancestors had fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and then added, "They fought on the wrong side of American history. That, my friends, is how I personally feel about the Confederate battle flag."

It goes without saying that it would have been more courageous had he denounced the flag during the primary battle. Nonetheless, one could sense his failure to do so had weighed heavily upon his conscience. He didn't have to return to give that speech. But he did. A racist would not have done so.

Forward to the present: By feigning indignation and accusing Obama of "playing the race card," McCain returns to the politics of expediency. No, McCain didn't run that ad because he doesn't like black people. No one really believes that anyway. So the "race card" retort is just a straw-man, debating tactic—that is, misrepresenting an opponent's argument and then shooting that argument down.

McCain ran the ad because he knows there are a lot of white people who are inclined to believe the worst in a black politician. (Ask any reporter who's been on the campaign trail what many blue-collar white voters in places like Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio are saying about Obama.) That's political expediency. Not racism.

McCain employs highly skilled media people. They know exactly the kind of reaction his ad would evoke from a certain segment of the electorate. Maureen Dowd said it well in her Sunday column this week, pointing out that in a recent New York Times poll that only 31 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of Obama compared to 83 percent of blacks who did. She drew the conclusion that "the prejudice is visceral: Many Americans, especially blue collar, still feel uneasy about the Senate's exotic shooting star."

Republican accusations of elitism against Democrats are nothing new (the John Kerry wind-surfing hullabaloo being the latest example in a presidential election). But they will take on added resonance this year against Obama, a candidate whom many voters will be already inclined to dislike.

Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Is he? Probably, yes. Then again, what politician isn't a little bit of all three? It takes a special kind of gall to suggest that you should be the leader of the free world. John McCain, who has run for president twice, should know that as well as anyone.

Terry M. Neal is a former Washington Post political reporter. He is a media consultant and senior vice president of The Caraway Group in Washington, D.C.