Possibly. But hitherto all we know is that he’s cynical.

So why all the charges of racism?

Let’s take a look at some of the charges with an eye out for a common thread or line of reasoning that seems to be coherent and based on empirically verifiable data (e.g. McCain’s words and conduct).

We should first look to the most authoritative statements, those of Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee.

Of the McCain campaign’s “Celeb” ad (which is great, btw) in which Obama is likened to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (i.e. as a big time celebrity), Obama said the following:

“the only way [John McCain and Republicans] figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they’re saying is, ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he’s… doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, you know, he’s got a, he’s got a funny name.’”

Umm… okay. I don’t think that McCain was trying to scare people with the comparison to Spears and Hilton, I think he was making fun of Obama’s celebrity status. In any case, the problematic statement seems to be Obama’s claim that the McCain campaign is “saying… “[Obama] doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency.” (on a side note, at other venues Obama gaffed and stated “presidents on the other one dollar bills” or some other nonsense but back to the topic at hand.)

Well, if one looks at the Presidents on U.S. currency one will see men of all different shapes and sizes from the time of George Washington to Kennedy. Obama is a man, so he looks like those individuals in that respect, Obama is well-groomed, so again, he’s like them in that area of appearance too. However, there is one obvious aspect in which Obama and the U.S. Presidents are different: race. This is why many understood Obama’s statement as racist (in fact, it was a false accusation of racism, but I guess some interpret that as racism or “playing the race card” in itself”).

Here’s a demographic break down of those who saw Obama as racist:

Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%.† Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

…

53% of white voters saw it as racist, as did 44% of African-Americans and 61% of all other voters.

Rasmussen

But it’s not racist to correctly identify racism, what if McCain’s comparison of Obama to other major stars was, in some ways, racist? I personally don’t see how the ad could be construed in such a way, but then, I’m not overly concerned with matters of covert racism. The same Rasmussen poll shows that:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

So, if we are to trust the poll and the those polled (which, since I do not find “Celeb” racist at all, I’m so inclined), it would seem like Obama has indeed falsely accused McCain of racism. This false accusation, as noted above, has been seen as racist or as Obama’s “playing of the “race card”" by many.

But we already knew that Obama’s a racist!

What about McCain?

It seems that the charges of McCain’s being racist stem from Obama’s original statement and his loyalists’ attempts to rationalize his claim so that he might be exonerated in the public’s eye which views him, for the most part, as racist.

Here are some attempts to defend Obama and his false charges of racism:

Eugene Robinson, WaPo

I’m confident that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the rest of John McCain’s front-line surrogates know full well what messages they’re sending about Barack Obama and race. On the off chance that they — or, more likely, some of the white voters they’re trying to reach — don’t know text from subtext from context, here’s a deconstruction.

On Sunday, the exceedingly thin-skinned Graham was still shocked, saddened and outraged over Obama’s throwaway line, spoken days earlier, about not looking like previous presidents. Graham said on “Fox News Sunday” that “there’s no doubt in my mind that what Senator Obama is trying to suggest — that he’s a victim of something.” Graham later added: “We’re not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, ‘You’re a racist.’ That’s not going to happen in this campaign.”

The key words are “victim” and “racist” — which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama’s mouth because of their power to alienate.

Uh… no. The quote talks about “what Senator Obama is trying to suggest.” “Suggest” here has a sense of “imply/hint.” Nobody is putting words into Obama’s mouth with the intent of “alienating” somebody, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

With the first loaded word, Graham is trying to tie Obama to a stereotype: the Great African American Victim. He’s playing to the annoyance some whites feel at being reminded of racial sins committed long before they were born or even long before their families came to this country.

As Graham well knows, Obama has taken great pains to sanitize his campaign of even the faintest whiff of victimhood.

Actually, Obama specifically claimed, in the speech to which Graham refers, that he is the victim of scare tactics, e.g. the following:

“John McCain and the Republicans, they don’t have any new ideas, that’s why they’re spending all their time talking about me. I mean, you haven’t heard a positive thing out of that campaign in … in a month. All they do is try to run me down and you know, you know this in your own life…

But, since they don’t have any new ideas the only strategy they’ve got in this election is to try to scare you about me. They’re going to try to say that I’m a risky guy, they’re going to try to say, ‘Well, you know, he’s got a funny name and he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills and, and they’re going to send out nasty emails.

And, you know, the latest one they’ve got me in an ad with Paris Hilton… You know, never met the woman. But, but, you know, what they’re gonna try to argue is that somehow I’m too risky.”

Mr. Robinson asks, “Who’s Raising Race?” Apparently, Obama is, by falsely accusing John McCain and Republicans of trying to “scare” the American people into thinking that Obama is “too risky,” because, among other points, Obama “doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills.” Since the main discernible difference is that Obama is not white like the U.S. Presidents, Obama seems to be accusing McCain of trying to “scare” Americans by making Obama appear “too risky” because he’s not white. If this is so, then Obama is not only calling McCain a racist, but he’s calling Americans racist as well, for why else would we be “scared” ?

Bob Herbert takes a different approach and asks:

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Well, Bob, possibly because of this:

"I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse." - B. Obama (H/T - NewsBusters)

Back to the article:

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Hold on. “The Other” ? With “Other” capitalized? Oh brother, first it’s “alienation” and now “The Other,” I sense that more Post-Modern Liberal / Neo-Marxist themes are on the way… yippee…

/

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

Wait, what?

No. As Obama himself has stated, Mr. Obama is a celebrity “making Paris Hilton look like a recluse.” Arguably the two most recognizable international celebrities, Britteny Spears and Paris Hilton, are featured in the McCain ad entitled “Celeb.” Contrary to what Obama implied the ad was not called “Beware of B. Hussein Obama, he’s too risky because he’s not white,” in fact, the ad merely reiterates and makes fun of Obama’s own statement about being “overexposed” (note: even if Obama had just made that statement alone and had not mention Paris Hilton, the play on the term “overexposed” would have been enough to connect Obama’s words to the actions of celebrities who are know to expose themselves in public. hint: that has nothing to do with race or racism).

Herbert concludes his op-ed with:

Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition

Yeah, Herbert just said that McCain is “more than willing to” “viciously [exploit] race for political gain.”

Nice.

Here’s the latest bit of insanity from Herbert’s exegesis of the “Celeb” ad (from MSNBC – Morning Joe H/T – LGF, HotAir and NewsBusters):

done

Notice we hear Herbert complaining about McCain stating that he is the “American” candidate who “Americans” have been waiting for. However, McCain is not implying that Obama is somehow not American. McCain is merely defining himself in contrast to Obama’s assertion that he (Obama) is a “citizen of the world.” As George Will remarks:

Citizen of the world and global citizenship are, strictly speaking, nonsense. Citizenship is defined by legal and loyalty attachments to a particular political entity with a distinctive regime and culture. Neither the world nor the globe is such an entity.

In fact, “citizen” is etymologically related to “city” which comes from the Latin “civitas.”

Well, when all is said and done those accusing John McCain of running a race-based or racist campaign come out looking pretty foolish, if you ask me.

†The percentage here is of the 69% of voters that say they’ve seen coverage of the McCain ad.