With Friends Like These...
how does a candidate finesse an awkward endorsement?
2008-02-29
By Terry Glover

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were all, at least for this week, on the same page. The three presidential hopefuls (sorry, Huck, nothing for you) have been on the receiving end of a bit of unwanted attention in the guise of constituent support. And, while they have tried to handle their respective situations as tactfully as possible, from here, it looks a lot like trying to shake that weird neighbor at the block club barbeque.

It started with Minister Louis Farakhan’s Savior’s Day praise of Obama.  Calling his progress in the race “phenomenal,” his presence on the political landscape “inspiring,” Farakhan went on to say that he was throwing his full support behind the man. But even he knew his endorsement presented Obama with a sticky situation. “I’m not trying to cause trouble for the brother,” he cautioned. But trouble was exactly the end result. How, then to sidestep the very publicly pronounced support of a man whose relationship with whites has been notoriously antagonistic? Who spent a significant number of years as leader of the Nation of Islam casting white people, who are now throwing their votes behind Obama, as “the Devil.”

An embarrassed Obama mumbled his way through it, telling the press that he neither solicited nor accepted the minister’s support. But, even then, he had to deliver the message with a sleight of hand, so as not to raise the ire of Black voters who had initially been skeptical of his colorblind campaign strategy and were now beginning to rally around him. His deft handling of the situation resulted in the press making note of it then moving along. Nothing to see here.

For Hillary Clinton, however, one man’s weakness is another (wo)man’s opportunity.

In Tuesday’s Ohio debate, Clinton pulled Farakhan’s endorsement out of the bottom drawer as if it were OJ’s bloody glove. “It is not enough,” she lectured, “for us to repudiate. We must also denounce.”

“OK,” Obama snickered, “I repudiate and denounce the Minister and his message.” Point, game, set: Obama.

Clinton found it necessary to do some denouncing of her own a couple of days later when Hispanic activist and Hillary supporter Adelfa Callejo told a Texas newscaster that Obama’s problem is “simply, that he is Black.”

What’s that you say, Hil?

John McCain learned from both of them, scrambling to get to reporters immediately after his appearance in Cincinnati, where wing-nut radio host Bill Cunningham warmed up the crowd by provocatively referencing Obama’s middle name, Hussein, several times.

Sure, politics is dirty business, but roughing up your opponents is a very delicate procedure requiring the kind of calculated jabs consultants are paid handsomely to devise. Freelancing is not welcomed and, is, almost always, ill advised. The celebrity interloper runs especially rampant in the kind of hyped reality we’ve created around the fleeting notion of fame: Everybody is a star. Flame out in spectacular fashion.  None of them approach looking like Crazy Guggenheim, so, short of a Rorshach screening, there is no way to see them coming.

What, then is the workaround for a situation like this when a personality – not merely a man on the street – jeopardizes your message with a wild hare rant that could easily unravel the very structure of a campaign? That personality represents, to whatever degree, the interests of a certain constituency, and the significance of that representation must be weighed against the vigor of a denial. But, to lob a soft volley in hopes of not offending implies a lack of conviction to principles, not a flattering quality in your paperboy, let alone the leader of a super powered nation.

The safest, and most sane, approach would seem to be the one that’s worked best for the candidates all around --  stay on point with your message and put a good deal of distance between yourself and the bearer of controversy.

In other words: Parry. Thrust. Repudiate. Denounce.

Terry Glover is Senior Editor for Ebonyjet.com. She writes about current trends and popular culture.