John McCain, nice guy

Despite stories of his explosive temper, there is absolutely no doubt that McCain has been playing it nice so far in this election season. It’s easy to do right now, of course, with Obama and Hillary acting as his surrogates against each other. They sling the mud so he doesn’t have to. Nevertheless, now that it looks as if Obama will be the last mud-soaked man standing, McCain’s nice policy is finally going to start paying off.

To appreciate how important that nice policy is going to be in this election, it’s useful to consider Jonah Goldberg’s analysis of how the race card has played out between Hillary and Obama:

Indeed, Obama’s spinners must be yoga masters considering how far they have to stretch to make their case [that the Clintons are racists]. Betsy Reed, of the left-wing magazine The Nation, cites the Clinton campaign’s reference to Obama’s past drug use (raised most prominently by black Clinton surrogate Bob Johnson) and Bill’s belittling of Obama’s claims of anti-war purity as a “fairy tale” as examples of invidious racial politics.

Huh? Bill Clinton’s marijuana use was an issue in 1992, and in 2000 the press went bonkers over allegations that George W. Bush had used drugs long ago. So why should it be racist to mention Obama’s even more significant drug use? Likewise, the use of the phrase “fairy tale” wasn’t racial. Even Hillary’s entirely valid, but now-infamous, observation that it was Lyndon Johnson, not Martin Luther King Jr., who secured passage of the Civil Rights Act can be described as racist only if the standard for racism is reduced to anything that hurts Obama. Dubbing inconvenient truths as “racist” is poisonous to U.S. politics. Which is why I have so little sympathy for the Clintons, because it was the Clintons themselves who mainstreamed crying racism (or sexism, or, in the case of Chinese fundraising scandals, anti-Chinese sentiment) in response to criticism.

For McCain to be Mr. Nice Guy will help defuse — or, indeed, expose the invidious game playing behind — any charges of racism that will be raised against McCain no matter what he says about Obama.  Given the mindset on the Left, absent an abject declaration that Obama is God, everything McCain says will be viewed through racism colored glasses.

Others are thinking the same thoughts about the McCain approach.  Lee Cary, writing at American Thinker, sees McCain positioning himself always to throw powerful counter-punches.  He’s strong enough to take or deflect the first hit, but that leaves him an opening to come back with feigned ingenuousness to keep the American public focuses on Obama’s many, many faults.  In other words, McCain, to defeat the dangers inherent in fighting a bad candidate who just happens to be black will have to employ an iron hand/velvet glove approach to this election cycle.  Let’s hope that McCain’s years of military disciplinary stand him in good stead, in case his first instinct is to come out swinging.