In the video above, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis defends the charge that Barack Obama consciously injected race into the campaign by reference to his assertion that nefarious Republicans would raise concerns about Obama not looking like presidents on “the dollar bills.” Obama of course denies that he was doing so. Responding to Davis, however, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod gets tongue-tied like a Republican while conceding the point in issue:
[W]hat it means, what he was saying – and he does this in a self mocking way – look, I know I’m not from central casting when it comes to presidents of the United States. I’m new, I’m relatively young, I haven’t spent my life in Washington. And yes, I’m African-American – and that’s going to be some fodder.
Andrew Malcolm notes Axelrod’s concession here.
UPDATE: On Axelrod’s “not from central casting” comment, a reader observes:
Where has he been for the last 10 years? Hollywood broke its “glass ceiling” at least a decade ago, when Morgan Freeman portrayed the President in “Deep Impact.” And what about the character of David Palmer on the TV show “24”? With that show alone, over multiple seasons in the last six years there’s been something like 120 hours of primetime glowing portrayals of an African-American in the top slot. In fact, the African-American as President meme is an unflaggingly positive one — those two characters are always, always dignified, confident, effective, almost omniscient. The whole effort to appeal to racial guilt undermines everything that launched Obama into the national limelight in 2004 with his speech at the Democratic Convention. The man is so desperate to be President he’ll say or do anything…
Via RealClearPolitics (text and video).
To comment on this post, go here.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.