If Barack Obama accepted the endorsement of a minister who called for eradicating Judaism, praised that minister, and campaigned with that minister, what would the media reaction be? Would Fox News not go nuts over that–especially if there were video? Would CNN and MSNBC not provide plenty of air time to outraged commentators demanding that Obama denounce this minister and reject his support? Would The New York Times and The Washington Post not devote inches of columns to news stories and columns dissecting the relationship between Obama and the minister and use the occasion for big-think articles probing the relationship between blacks and Jews?
With that in mind, let’s turn to an exchange between Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol from this Sunday on Fox News:
WALLACE: With all the talk about Obama and Reverend Wright, I got a bunch of email this past week from viewers who said: “Why don’t you ever talk about McCain and the evangelical — some of the evangelical ministers who have endorsed him?” And let’s put up a couple of these: Reverend John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church a “false cult,” and Reverend Rod Parsley, who has attacked Islam and said that Allah was a “demon spirit.” Do you think it’s fair, Bill, to compare McCain’s, quote, “ministers” to Obama’s pastor?
KRISTOL: No, because these are just individuals who’ve endorsed Senator McCain. I think, actually, some of the attacks, especially on Reverend Hagee, are unfair. But leaving that aside, no. This would be like attacking Obama because random individuals in the Democratic Party have endorsed him. Obama and Wright have a close relationship. Obama chose, not just to join Reverend Wright’s church, but to stay there over 20 years. And that’s what hurts him.
Talk about intellectual honesty–or the lack thereof. Kristol is right (to a degree) that the Obama case and the McCain case are different. Obama had a long and personal relationship with Wright (which, depending on your view, might make the matter better or worse). But McCain, out of political expedience, made common cause with Hagee (a well-known anti-Catholic, who called Catholicism the “great whore” and a “false cult system”) and with Parsley, who has called for western Christian nations, in particular the United States, to destroy (literally) the “false religion” of Islam. McCain sought and accepted the endorsement of each of these fundamentalist pastors. He campaigned with Parsley before the Ohio primary and called him a “spiritual guide.”
These are not cases in which miscellaneous crackpots endorsed a candidate and the candidate cannot be held accountable for the endorsements. (And by the way, what’s been unfair about the criticism of Hagee?) So why shouldn’t McCain be slapped for deliberately hooking up with these haters? Shouldn’t he at least be pressured to eschew their support? Go back to the scenario above. There is not much that is different in the unhypothetical case involving McCain and Parsley–except that Islam is the target. That allows Kristol and others to give McCain a pass.
See the Kristol video:
