John McCain's Soul

"I think if McCain uses these very nasty character references he risks losing his soul. This is what he said he wouldn't do in this campaign," said author and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius Sunday morning on the Chris Matthews Show.

The language has indeed gotten very scary at several campaign rallies with outbursts of "terrorist!," "kill him," and "treason," sometimes with introductions by people who slowly repeated the candidate's middle name ... Barack Hussein Obama. And the fact that Barack Obama is the first African American to have a chance of winning the American presidency brings a racial dimension to such anger that is indeed scaring many people, including former civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis who spoke out against the racially tinged climate of hostility this weekend. Then Lewis was attacked.

When I watched McCain at these rallies, especially when his running mate, Sarah Palin, was firing up the crowd, including saying Obama was "palling around with terrorists," he looked uncomfortable to me. Here is a man who has tried to build his life and political career with an appeal to honor while his campaign moves in an increasingly dishonorable direction. The atmosphere at some campaign rallies has been described as dangerous and alarming. The language used by some of those rally participants has definitely crossed the line, as murky as that line often is.

The atmosphere at Sarah Palin rallies and McCain town forums got so nasty in recent days that, on at least two occasions, McCain took back the microphone from people making angry assaults against Barack Obama to defend his opponent. In a Minnesota town hall meeting, McCain described Barack Obama as "a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." When a woman at the same town hall said of Obama, "he's an Arab," McCain replied that he is a "decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues" -- which is fair enough. And he reportedly has refused to let his campaign resurrect the attacks on Obama based on the inflammatory statements of Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Obama's former church.

I hope John McCain trusts his instincts and decisively turns away from the kind of campaigning that makes politics dishonorable, as he now seems to be doing. I don't like the way that candidates from both sides (and both presidential campaigns are doing it again this time) habitually exaggerate the success of their own records while caricaturing the records of their opponents. But I realistically know that is just politics as usual, especially at this point in an election cycle. We are where we are, and both sides say the other side started it. I don't like negative campaigning, would like them both to stay on the high road, and thought these two had the capacity to do that this time around. But the angry rallies are more than just politics as usual.

John McCain has the power and the moral authority to turn off the character assassination in his own campaign and I hope he does--just like when he takes the microphone away from those who have gone too far. Instead, McCain should focus the rest of this election season around the issues of national direction and public policy that his long career shows he cares so much about. In the remaining weeks of this so hotly contested and divisive election year, we need the best from our candidates for president, which I trust is within them both.

Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com.

Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

Comments

[Linda Hansen - Huffpost Blogger]

Ah, Jim--

I am a believer; I have been on your Sojourners mailing list for some time now. I came to Atlanta, to the Carter Center to hear you speak; bought your new book, The Great Awakening. I keep a dog-eared copy of God's Politics on my desk -- a reference, here in the Deep South, to answer the purveyors of intolerance, the fundamentalist, war-mongering hatred of all dark-skinned Arabs. They love this war more than they love the spirit of Christ, who taught us that "...the last shall be first..." and "Blessed are the peacemakers..."

Your defense of John McCain, your saying that, at this late date -- after weeks of inciting mob violence at McCain/Palin rallies -- this man's soul is somehow blameless, somehow better than his own campaign proves he is, asks us to suspend logical disbelief.

His is the the final voice in his own campaign . He is has the final say, the power to determine what is said in his name. The hate-speech should never have begun, and after it did, he should have (and could have) forcefully put an end to it. He chose not to.

Palin says only what she's told to say.

It is time, Pastor Wallis, for those of us who say we are believers in the word of Christ, to call a hate-mongerer a hate mongerer. His soul, however pristine it might have been, is clearly trumped by the blind rage of pure ambition.

[fedupcitizen]

McCain's quest for power has led him to abandon his integrity and soul.

[peterg76]

Are you kidding? McCain's soul is long gone, and I don't think it will be back.