I’m of course not forgetting the primaries, but pointing to them. The situation there was that any mention of racism at all seemed forbidden. It was forbidden for the Clintons to engage in coded racism, and it was forbidden for Obama supporters to accuse them of using coded racism. The general subject is simply taboo in the mainstream media. And sure enough, I mention it here and immediately get jumped on, as if we are supposed to exhaust every other possible explanation for some political situation before even daring to raise the issue of race. As if it’s somehow different from everything else in politics, and can’t be discussed rationally as a rather obvious factor in how people think and act and vote.

As for comparing Obama’s “citizen of the world” remark to Kerry’s “global test”, of course this doesn’t wash. Neither Reagan nor Bush nor any other President or candidate had made that formulation before, whereas they had clearly used Obama’s phrase before without raising any rankles. Kerry’s phrase is loaded with obvious subjugation of our decision-making process to some kind of outside agency, whereas no such implications arise in Obama, Reagan, or Bush’s use of the “citizen of the world” phrase. I would of course agree with you that the main issue here is Americanism/anti-Americanism, but that can’t be separated from racism itself due to our country’s horrific racial history, in which blacks were not allowed real citizenship, were not given the freedoms the Declaration of Independence claimed were every man’s birthright, were treated as outsiders, as un-American, even up to this very day as we see in how Obama is being treated on issues like Wright and this one, and the general matter of whether he was “American” enough. I am willing to bet you untold amounts of money that if Obama’s skin were white, we wouldn’t be arguing about whether he was “American” enough. John Edwards had virtually identical political stances and was if anything more liberal than Obama, and yet no one every claimed he wasn’t American enough. Why? Well, the great good grace of being a white man from the South rather than a black man from Chicago. I think this is so obvious the really interesting issue isn’t whether it’s true or not, but why so many people are determined to bend over backwards denying it and pretending it isn’t the real issue here. We have a black man running for President, and the opposition is portraying him as an outsider who “doesn’t share our values”. What exactly is that, really, but coded racism? I would really like an adequate explanation from someone that doesn’t strain all credulity.

I assume that you have forgotten the primaries, right? Racism was being mentioned constantly–frequently by Obama supporters, sometimes by the campaign (when it was accusing the Clintons of race-baiting) and more often by pundits. Much of the reaction to the New Yorker cover had everything to do with acknowledging the role of racism in the election. There are plenty of other examples. Whatever else you want to say about this, let’s not say that no one can talk about the role of racism in the election.

It may have a role in some of the reactions to this use of the phrase, but it is not terribly different from when the GOP jumped on Kerry for talking about a “global test,” and you can see critics linking the two phrases today. Kerry’s remark was arguably much more innocuous, but it created a firestorm of criticism from the right along much the same lines. Does hostility to Obama’s background add to this in some cases? It likely does. But I would stress, as I did during the blow-up over Wright, any time the GOP and mainstream conservatives are going crazy about something, it is more likely because of Americanism/anti-Americanism rather than being because of anything else. In my view, this is more dangerous because it is a more socially acceptable line of attack that is still deeply pernicious to the quality of policy debate.

For what it’s worth, mainstream conservatives tend to flip out even more about statements that imply “isolationism” than they do about statements that may imply some globalist view (it has been hilarious to see efforts–usually by buffoons such as Kirchick–to paint Obama as a “neo-isolationist” at the same time that others are warning against his excessive one-worldism). The GOP will try to exploit anxiety about globalism for political advantage, but it is never going to reject globalist policies, and the GOP finds “isolationism” far more threatening than talk of tearing down walls.

I don’t limit it to racism. It’s also anti-liberal propaganda as well. It’s both. Pretending there’s no racism here is just being deliberately obtuse. Something about this whole election, however, seems to require that no one ever mention racism, as if it isn’t a big factor in so many of these “furors” over Obama’s phrasings.

No, I’m limiting it to the kind of political rhetoric that politicians use to capitalize on the ordinary fears that many in the conservative “base” feel, and a number of others outside that base as well. We are seeing that kind of rhetoric and that kind of appeal in play here on this issue.

In my original post I attributed this national political objection not only to racism, but to the caricatures of liberalism that tend to go hand in hand with the noxious forms of conservative political demagoguery in this country. Frankly, I doubt the term would have the same resonance with a white politician of either party, especially seeing as how Obama phrased it as “A citizen of the United States, and a citizen of the world”. As you have remarked earlier, it’s just basic boilerplate internationalism, wholy appropriate in an address to an international audience, but out of Obama’s mouth there’s some crazed sense that it means brown-skinned people will rule the world. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s negative connontations won’t carry much further beyond certain reactionary circles that wouldn’t vote for him in any case. Most Americans understand that we need to act as participants in world politics, not outsiders who cannot see themselves as part of a larger world of relations. Part of the change people want to see in our foreign policy is more openness and responsibility, rather than dictating to others and making enemies in the process. It’s kind of obvious how that has alienated our allies around the world. Obama is just making assurances that the US will be a responsible member of the international community.

There’s no denying that racism motivates some people’s opposition and/or depth of opposition to Obama. There’s also no denying that racism is seen by some as a useful tool to help defeat Obama in the election.

But, it’s silly to think that racism is necessarily what motivates the “national furor” over this phrase just because “white conservatives” such as Bush and Reagan didn’t get such criticism when they used it. Do you think that a white liberal presidential candidate, John Kerry for example, would get a free pass on this from the “usual suspects” (NRO, Republican-oriented conservative bloggers, talk radio, etc)?

The people turning things like this into an issue aren’t overly bothered by consistency. They are interested supporting their side, attacking the other side, and being on the winning side come November. It hardly matters what Obama does; he’ll be attacked for it. If he doesn’t go abroad, it highlights his lack of foreign policy experience. If he goes abroad, it’s purely a campaign stunt. Strangely, I don’t recall many Republicans spinning McCain’s recent overseas trips in that manner.

What’s more, calling racism everytime you see this sort of inconsistency just makes you look like a bad stereotype. Save it for the obvious cases — there’s no shortage of those.

Inferring racism to conservative electoral politicians after the history of the last 60 years is hardly a stretch of one’s soul-reading powers.

I’m not suggesting your objection to the phrase is racist, or based on anything but principled criticism. But any national furor on this issue is, indeed, based on racial coding and racial fears, seeing as how when prominent white conservatives use the same term, hardly anyone seems to care.

I do disagree with your notion that there is no such thing as a “citizen of the world” in our political identity. We have overlapping levels of political involvement, the last (so far, until extraterrestials establish diplomatic relations) being our joint citizenship of the planet. We are, indeed, a family, all of us cousins of varying degrees of separation. National boundaries are traditional, but in the end transcended by our common humanity. I think you would have a point if you think Obama is suggesting we erase our smaller forms of citizenship and embrace only the largest, but that’s precisely the point he was not making. Our levels of citizenship include family, neighborhood, town, county, state, regional, national, language, continental, and finally, worldwide. I see no harm in reminding people of this when talking about international relations. It would be quite a different thing if this were brought up as an argument against local zoning ordinances.

Had Reagan and Bush been Democrats, you can pretty much guarantee that the partisan incentive would have been there to rake them over the coals for saying things that could be spun as showing a lack of patriotism or weaker loyalty. I will agree with conradg up to a point, in that this phrase would not have been noticed and would not be the subject of much discussion in mainstream conservative circles if Obama were not already being targeted with both fair critiques and illegitimate smears regarding his values.

All those Obama boosters who were so keen to emphasise Obama’s background and how “internationalism ran in his veins” (as I believe one Canadian politician said of him) are presumably going to start regretting it, because Obama is unusually vulnerable for a Democratic nominee to this critique. That is why I originally called the remark a blunder, because it is not the kind of thing that Obama should be saying if he wants to undermine this line of attack. He can’t win an Americanism bidding war with McCain, but he can avoid giving his opponents ammunition.

I’d rather much not judge the state of other people’s souls. You can do so, but for someone who claims to be so enlightened, it’s rather presumptuous.

When talking about electoral politics, I use the term “conservative” to refer to those who have dominated that label for the last 60 years or so. If you want to lead a revolution against such people, be my guest, but don’t expect the rest of us to see political conservatism as anything but dominated by many of the worst elements of American politics, racists included, until that actually happens. If you think these kinds of reactions to Obama are really anything other than coded racism, I’d advise you to take your head out of the sand and look around. You offer no reason at all why on the national political scene, rather than in some meeting of Ron Paul devotees, that Reagan’s and Bush’s use of these same terms and concepts raises no ire or even eyebrows, while Obama’s does. You can call it a double-standard, but it’s based on racial fears. When Reagan says he’s a citizen of the world, people take comfort that at least a white man is in charge. But a cosmopolitan world in which dark-skinned people are in charge, that’s a little too much for some people to take.