David Axelrod Admits it's All About Race [UPDATED]

Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod went on Good Morning America this morning to address McCain campaign manager Rick Davis' asertion that Obama is playing the race card. Interviewer Chris Cuomo played Obama's comments from yesterday in reaction to McCain's brilliant "Celeb" ad in which Obama's readiness to lead the country is brought into question. Obama said, "What they're [Bush and McCain] going to do is try to scare you about me. He's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Cuomo asked Axelrod what Obama meant by that.

But Axelrod's answer (1:35) contained a little more truth than he may have liked to admit. Axelrod was trying to explain that Obama was not saying McCain would use his race against him. Instead, he admitted that Obama himself has been using his race as a justification for his candidacy all along.

CUOMO: "What does that mean if it's not a suggesiton that his race is going to be used against him?"

AXELROD: "Well...look he's said...and by the way he's said this repeatedly as you've mentioned all across the country, he's not from central casting when it comes to candidates for President of the United States...he's young, he's new to Washington, yes he's African-American, and...uh so this is nothing new."

Those are the three justifications for Obama's candidacy, according to its chief architect, David Axelrod. Obama should be elected president because he's young, he's inexperienced, and, "yes he's African-American." Just don't call Obama on it. That would be using his race against him.

UPDATE 16:30: The Obama campaign now admits Obama was talking about race when he accused McCain and Republicans of trying to scare voters.

Obama's camp initially denied the remark was a reference to Obama's race. [...]

"He was referring to the fact that he didn't come into the race with the history of others," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday. "It is not about race."

But Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on "Good Morning America" Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background. When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told "GMA" it meant, "He's not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He's new to Washington. Yes, he's African-American."

That seemingly obvious reference sparked the first real fireworks between the two camps as backers of both candidates accused the other of trying to subtly inject race into the presidential contest.

Obama's Judgment Means Longer Wars

The McCain Campaign has been showing signs of life lately.  There is one issue that motivates McCain to go on the offensive, and that is national security in general and the war in Iraq in particular.  Barack Obama is set to travel to Iraq to view firsthand the success of the troop surge that he opposed.  And the McCain campaign isn't about to let him try to share in the credit.

The campaign released a statement yesterday, reacting to the news that the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government have come to an agreement on a "general time horizon" for the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.  To some on the left, the announcement is vindication for Obama's plan to remove troops from Iraq quickly.  For some on the right, the announcement pulls the rug out from under John McCain, who has steadfastly argued that the duration of the U.S. troop presence should be determined by conditions, not politics.  Both are evidence of shallow thinking.

Rather than a defeat for McCain, and evidence of the prescience of the Senator from H.O.P.E., the announcement is a vindication of McCain's call for a surge of troops to begin with.  It is evidence of the correctness of Republican and Administration policies on the war and should be celebrated as such.  It also shows the dangerous irony of Obama's and liberals' timidity in matters of war.  In their zeal to end hostilities and prevent casualties, Democratic policies lead to longer wars and more bloodshed.

McCain's statement hits all those themes and more.

"Progress between the United States and Iraq on a time horizon for American troop presence is further evidence that the surge has succeeded.  Most of the U.S. forces in the surge have already been withdrawn.  When a further conditions-based withdrawal of U.S. forces is possible, it will be because we and our Iraqi partners built on the success of the surge strategy, which Senator Obama opposed, predicted would fail, voted against, and campaigned against in the primary.  When we withdraw, we will withdraw with honor and victory.  An honorable and victorious withdrawal would not be possible if Senator Obama's views had prevailed.  An artificial timetable based on political expediency would have led to disaster and could still turn success into defeat.  If we had followed Senator Obama's policy, Iraq would have descended into chaos, American casualties would be far higher, and the region would be destabilized."

Exactly right.

The whole point of the Iraq War was to stand up a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East.  The point of the surge was to bring down violence so that the Iraqi government could grow.  That it has done so and is looking for the earliest possible date for U.S. withdrawal is the plan working as it was intended.  It is not evidence of some kind of defeat for the Administration or McCain.  Nor is it a chance for Obama to jump on the bandwagon of the strategy that he didn't have the judgment to recognize would succeed.  McCain is correct to hail this development as a defeat for Obama, who sided with those who said Iraq was a hopeless disaster 18 months ago.

Good for Sen. McCain for issuing this statement.  Now he should make it into a television commercial, and run it in every battleground state.

A New Kind of Sleaze

The Obama campaign officially says that Gen. Wesley Clark was not officially speaking for Obama when on CBS's Face the Nation this past Sunday, he denigrated Sen. John McCain's military experience. "I don't think that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president, " Clark sniffed. Besides hinting that McCain was a substandard pilot-good ones do not get shot down-that remark necessarily discounts everything that came afterwards, McCain's five and a half years of voluntary confinement. Voluntary because the North Vietnamese, after learning that McCain was the son of a top U.S. Admiral, offered him early release, ahead of others who had been captured before McCain. McCain refused, not wanting to hand his captors a propaganda victory and undermine the morale of his co-prisoners. McCain never had to endure the debilitating torture, the beatings, the psychological torment, and the spirit-breaking confinement. He did it out of love of country and dedication to duty.

This is not to try and make McCain into a Christ-like figure, willingly suffering for the nation's sins. But it does illuminate just how egregious and despicable Clark's comments were. To boil McCain's entire military record down to the singular event of the loss of his plane while flying bombing missions over Hanoi, the most dangerous duty for an aviator in the Vietnam War, is so callous and dismissive that it had to have been intentional. Clark's defenders, and Clark himself, have said that he was merely responding to a question from host Bob Schieffer. But this only underscores the point that Clark was deliberately taking a shot at McCain's military experience. Schieffer's question pointed to the fact the Obama has no military or comparable executive experience that approaches McCain's. Clark had to diminish McCain in order to build up Obama.

But Clark was not the first, nor will he be the last, Obama surrogate to question McCain's military service. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have both made comments questioning McCain's service, the latter going so far as to say that McCain does not understand the human cost of war because he was a pilot that dropped bombs on targets from high above. In each instance, the Obama campaign has refused to denounce the smears against McCain. In Clark's case, Sen. Obama made an oblique reference to the comments in his grand speech on patriotism, but did not denounce Clark by name.

This is not the "new kind of politics" that Sen. Obama plans to bring to America, it is the new kind of sleaze: send out surrogates to make baseless and despicable charges against your opponent all the while keeping the candidate above the fray by refusing to address or acknowledge the statements made on the campaign's behalf. Trouble is for Sen. Obama, as with almost everything else about him, this isn't really new. It is easily recognizable by the American people as the same kind of partisan politics that has so turned them off to politicians. Whatever short-term gain Obama may think he is getting from taking McCain's experience and qualifications for office down a notch will be more than outweighed by the disappointment many will come to feel when they realize that Obama isn't a new kind of politician after all.

Federal Jobs Illegal Immigrants Can’t Do

President Bush modified an Executive Order from the Clinton Administration yesterday to effectively bar illegal immigrants from working jobs on the Federal dole. All Federal contractors will now have to register for the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program and check the status of all their workers and subcontractors’ workers before starting work on Federal contracts.

The E-Verify program is the bane of civil liberties and open borders groups because it uses the Social Security Administration’s database to actually cross check the often times fraudulent or stolen numbers provided by illegal immigrants on their employment applications. A Federal Court in San Francisco, natch, blocked part of Homeland Security’s program in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the San Francisco Labor Council, and the strange political bedfellows of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That ruling, issued by Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer’s brother Judge Charles Breyer, has prevented the Social Security Administration from sending out over 140,000 “no match” letters to employers. The letters would have required employers to take steps to verify their employees’ identities within 90 days or else fire the workers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at the time that the ruling did not amount to a “holiday from law enforcement,” and that the Administration would do, “as much administratively as we can, within the boundaries of existing law,” to continue to crackdown on illegal immigration. The president rightfully took a lot of criticism from the right for his backing of the Senate’s disastrous “comprehensive” immigration bill, and many have been skeptical of the Administration’s stepped up enforcement of illegal immigration laws in the wake of that compromise’s failure in Congress. Sen. McCain, too, a champion of the Senate bill, professes to have seen the light on illegal immigration and now calls for securing the border before taking up any immigration bill. Yesterday’s move to secure federally contracted jobs for American workers is evidence that the Administration does get it, and is another huge victory for opponents of illegal immigration. McCain can show that he gets it too by pledging not to alter or rescind the order if elected.

It's All History Now

It has been two days since Sen. Barack Obama's clinching win in the Democratic primary race. Oh, wait! I forgot to mention that his win was historic. Forgive me. The media has been busy reminding viewers and readers every thirty to forty words or so that Obama is the first African-American to win the presidential nomination of a major American political party. Aside from the fact that it is true, a fact which bears mentioning...once; this incessant harping on history has another, higher purpose. Namely, to set the narrative for the general election campaign. A vote for Obama is a vote for "history;" while a vote for the Republican, and erstwhile media darling Sen. John McCain, is a vote not just against Obama, but is anti-historic. In other words, if you don't vote for Obama, you don't want history to be made, you are against progress, and you are preventing America from becoming all that it can be.

Good Morning America's Chris Cuomo provided that last helpful bit of analysis on the morning after the (historic) win. He said on air that Obama's win was as much about him as it was about America becoming a more just and and better country than it is. Yes, because America just won't be great until every liberal fantasy is fulfilled, until every media command is obeyed, and until there is no more history to be made. From now until November, the media will pound its narrative home. And if it does not get its way, and McCain somehow defies history, all will be wrong again. Until the next great liberal hope rises, and the media finds another champion through whom it can remake America in its image.