Jonathan Martin discusses the difficulty of deploying smear tactics against Obama, but I think he underestimates the degree to which anonymous chain e-mails and third-party (i.e., independent organisations, not political parties) advertising will be able to operate unchecked under the national media’s radar.  To a large degree, the rumours swirling on the Internet are already doing this, and the MSM’s ham-fisted responses to the existence of the chain e-mails have not quashed the rumours, but almost lended them a degree of credibility, as if there is a real “issue” that Obama has to confront.  Politically speaking, however, it seems as if the “issue” has become real despite the completely false nature of the story.  We see also at Martin’s blog Obama’s statemments to Jewish voters in Ohio regarding these e-mails, which shows that his campaign has to waste its time fielding questions about these false claims because there clearly is a concern in the campaign that these charges are sticking a little too well.  In connection with the smear e-mails, you have the circulation of a photo that will probably feed the same paranoia.  When he repudiates these e-mails, he has to state at some point, “I’m not a Muslim…not that there’s anything wrong with that!” 

It seems to me that the public’s awareness that Obama has had some familial connections to Islam is a political liability for him, particularly at the present moment, and this is especially so when he is perceived as advocating a less aggressive foreign policy (even when his foreign policy may in some places be more aggressive).  When he proposes to meet with heads of various “rogue” regimes, the status of “globalised American” that some of his supporters want to give him will be a burden.  Because of his WASP background, Mr. Bush can make some gestures to the Palestinians and Muslims around the world at much less risk of being identified with these groups, while Obama will get less “credit” for his support for the air war against Lebanon and his reckless provocations over Pakistan because of the presumed empathy or affinity that his supporters keep insisting that he has.  Obama is already at risk of such an identification, and his foreign policy is perceived to be more accommodating, which is a political burden regardless of the merits of Obama’s proposals for a summit with Muslim heads of state or meetings with the Syrian or Iranian governments.  It is going to be much harder for someone perceived to be a “dove” to make these moves, and it will even harder for Obama personally. 

It probably doesn’t help, either, when Ralph Nader begins complaining publicly that Obama “used to support” the Palestinians and now doesn’t.  I wouldn’t hold this against him, but I am not at all representative of American opinion on Israel and Palestine.  Neither will it help him much for columnists to draw attention to his Kenyan relatives, as Kristof does this week.  Drawing attention to John Kerry’s French relatives did not make him seem more American in the end, but reinforced the hostile narrative being crafted about him that he was an out-of-touch elitist who didn’t understand America.  As we all remember, there was an absurd amount of Francophobia in 2003-04, so any association with France was politically disadvantageous.  To the extent that voters are aware of Kenya lately, they know that it is convulsed by chaos and ethnic strife.  Does it really help Obama with voters in much of the country to broadcast that he is part Luo and has Luo relatives still living in Kenya?  I suspect that, for all of the “nation of immigrants” rhetoric and the official enthusiasm for diversity, Obama’s biography will seem to most voters to be an overdose of diversity in a country that has elected just two white ethnic candidates as President in the last century (if you count Eisenhower).  When Obama frames his biography in terms that make his success into an example of the opportunities available in America, he appeals to a much broader audience and to some extent neutralises the political danger that comes from emphasising his background.  When he or his supporters attempt to make him into a Healer of International Rifts or a Builder of Bridges, he is on much shakier ground.