1928 and 1988: My Perspective

As the 2008 campaign enters its final week, I've had a lot of time to reflect on what this race has meant. With Barack Obama holding a lead in the polls and a commanding lead in the Electoral College, the historical implications of this election are staggering. America seems poised to tear down the "white men only" sign on the White House gate.

As I have thought about this election, the historian in me has also thought a lot about the election of 1928. It was in 1928 that the Democratic party also nominated a person who represented a dramatic break from the status quo. Alfred E. Smith was the four-term Governor of New York and a noted reformer when he was nominated by the Democratic national Convention in 1928. Smith was also a Catholic, the first Catholic to be nominated by a major political party for president. Like Barack Obama's race this year, Smith's religion saw his political opponent unleash a campaign of smear an innuendo almost beyond belief.

Growing up Catholic in a town with a large Catholic population, the idea that Catholics would be targets for bigotry simply never occurred to me. My friends and I never really talked about religion. They never asked me why we went to mass on Saturday evening or why we gave up certain things during Lent. Even in the public schools, Catholicism was no big deal.

Of course, 1928 was a far different time than the 1970's and 80's. Smith's nomination began a torrent of lies and misinformation designed to scare large segments of the population into not wanting Al Smith in the White House. Scurrilous tracts appeared claiming that President Smith would annul all Protestant marriages and that the pope would come to America to preside over cabinet meetings. Voters were warned that parochial school attendance would become mandatory for all American children. Even campaign buttons appeared that read "Keep a Christian in the White House". As Smith rode his campaign train west, the Klan and other hate groups burned crosses along the railroad tracks for Smith and his wife to see. In the end, Smith was defeated in a landslide. Historians still debate how much Smith's Catholicism hurt him. Clearly, it didn't help him as half of the Democrat's "Solid South" went Republican for the fdirst time in many memories. Outside of six Southern states, Smith only carried the heavily Catholic states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In any event, the campaign of 1928 was a shameful reminder of the ugly divisions in American society.

Now, eighty years later, we stand at another crossroads. The Democratic party has nominated the first major party African-American candidate for president. Like the campaign of 1928, the candidacy of Barack Obama has unleashed some examples of hate and bigotry that seem almost unimaginable. For most Americans of good conscience, these attacks read like a laundry list of absurdities: Obama is a secret Muslim, Obama is in league with terrorists, Mrs. Obama is a black militant who refers to whites as "Whitey", etc.

Here in northern Indiana, a large Obama sign in an African-American family's yard was defaced with the vile "N Word". An Obama staffer entered a Speedway gas station in Three Oaks, Michigan, and was confronted by a store employee who noticed his Obama hat and told him "You're a N----- Lover". At some mcCain rallies, persons have been spotted wearing shirts depicting Obama as a monkey.

The ultimate race-based attack of the 2008 campaign, however, came out of Pennsylvania. Ashley Todd, a McCain volunteer reported to police that she had been assaulted by a large black man while at her bank's ATM. When the man saw the McCain sticker on her car, she claimed that he pulled out a knife and carved a "B" for "Barack" into her cheek. Right wing sleaze-merchants like The Drudge Report and Faux News quickly jumped on the story and seemed to take glee in describing how the big, scary black man assaulted (Drudge said "mutilated") the helpless white woman.

While the Republican Ministry of Propoganda began working overtime on this story, the Pennsylvania police were investigating carefully. Well, it turns out that Miss Todd fabricated the entire story and scratched the "B" into her own cheek, even scratching it in backwards. I'm sure it was no coincidence that Miss Todd's fictional attacker was black. Just as I'm sure it was no coincidence that Republican sleaze merchants like Sean Hannity jumped on the story before any facts were checked. (oops! I'm sorry, since when does Faux News ever check their facts?)

What bothers me the most about the whole Ashley Todd fraud is that there has been no repudiation from the McCain campaign. Not one word has been uttered. Given the publicity surrounding this disgusting act, I'm sure even Governor Plain has heard about it. To me, their refusal to repudiate Ashley Todd only lends tacit approval to the next hate-fueled lunatic who wants to stage their own stunt.

America is faced with a momentous opportunity in one week. In giving Senator Obama an overwhelming victory on November 4, we can fully repudiate the tactics of the McCain campaign, their surrogates (both official and unofficial), and the motley crew of bigots and race-baiters who have latched onto the McCain campaign. in sending a strong message, we can show how far we, as a nation, have come from 1928. Like 1928, the 2008 campaign has exposed an ugly element in American society. We have the chance to drive it back under the rock where it belongs.