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Obama, McCain play Fear Factor in presidential race

By MARTIN SIEFF
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) (L) and Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) participate in the third and final presidential debate, moderated by CBS News anchorman Bob Schieffer, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on October 15, 2008. (UPI Photo/John Angelillo)
1 of 4 | Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) (L) and Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) participate in the third and final presidential debate, moderated by CBS News anchorman Bob Schieffer, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on October 15, 2008. (UPI Photo/John Angelillo) | License Photo

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Forget about love and the politics of hope: The Fear Factor trumps them every time.

Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., both confounded expectations to win their parties' presidential nominations on the politics of hope, consensus and a bright new future without the mudslinging of the past. But they head into the final two-week stretch of a marathon election campaign throwing more dirt at each other than any candidates in recent American history.

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McCain, staring defeat in the face, is accusing Obama of socialism -- the feared "s" word in U.S. presidential politics. GOP supporters are trying to raise alarms about the enthusiastic support the Obama candidacy has certainly received from the likes of Louis Farrakhan, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

In pretty much any election of the past 40 years, that kind of allegation widely circulated would have doomed Obama to go the way of George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 or Michael Dukakis in 1988. But this is no normal election year. The Republican fear card has been trumped -- not by Obama's "politics of hope" but by a far more visceral and direct Fear Factor: the fear of scores of millions of people losing their homes, their jobs and their retirement savings.

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The fear of economic ruin appears to have eclipsed the fears of Obama that the Republicans had sought to play on in this election that the senator from Illinois is black, relatively young, extremely inexperienced, was raised in a Muslim country, and that he allegedly was Muslim by faith in his youth but later lied about it.

These attacks on Obama curiously parallel the hysterical religious attacks on another Democratic candidate 80 years ago: New York Gov. Al Smith.

Smith had vastly more experience than Obama and had been the most successful reforming governor New York ever had. He had made its factory inspections and safety record the very best in the nation.

But Smith was also the first practicing Catholic to be the nominee of one of the two main U.S. political parties, and he was subjected to an extraordinary campaign of vilification, hatred and paranoia that far eclipsed anything that has been thrown at Obama.

Millions of Americans in 1928 really believed that if Smith was elected president, the pope would directly run the United States and he might even reactivate the Spanish Inquisition for good measure. It was all absurd nonsense. But it worked. The Democratic Party split down the middle, and Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover carried the South and West in a decisive victory.

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However, 1928 was a year of continued prosperity and economic security and confidence, when Americans could indulge in such far-fetched fears. The election of 1932 was not.

Once again, Hoover's camp tried to play the fear card against a Democratic presidential nominee: Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was alleged to be too stupid, too ill from his polio, too nice, too soft and, worst of all, far too socialist to be allowed near the presidency. But Americans in 1932 were not generally afraid of Franklin Roosevelt; they were afraid of starving to death with their families in the Great Depression. FDR won the election by a sweeping margin.

In American politics, racial prejudice, conspiracy theories and fears of international threats usually carry the day when the economy is good.

Democratic incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson's landslide victory over Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., in 1964 was greatly boosted by probably the most famous political advertisement in U.S. television history.

It showed a sweet little girl picking a flower after which a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile ominously rises into the air as a voice off camera portentously intones, "Vote for President Johnson." The subliminal message was that the libertarian-leaning Goldwater would start a nuclear war if elected president.

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Obama has certainly benefited from fears that McCain is a warmonger or that his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is far too inexperienced to be elected president, though the same argument can be made against Obama himself. In any case, the phenomenon of Obama-fear vs. Palin-fear is hardly an endorsement of positive politics by either party in this presidential campaign.

Fear of Obama as "the unknown" appears to have been very significantly mitigated by Gen. Colin Powell's endorsement of him Sunday. Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, former national security adviser and former secretary of state, is the first African-American to hold all of those positions, and he certainly could have had the Republican presidential nomination for the asking in 1996 -- and probably in 2000 as well.

Powell's outspoken support is a powerful card to trump the fear cards still being played against Obama. A Zogby poll released Monday and taken after the general came out for Obama showed the senator from Illinois doubling his leadership margin over McCain.

Obama led McCain 49.8 percent to 44.4 percent, according to the Monday tracking poll. On Sunday, Obama's lead was only 2.7 percent. Powell's endorsement, therefore, reversed a trend in which Obama's numbers had fallen against McCain's for the three previous consecutive days.

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For all their early talk about banishing fear, Obama and McCain are now doing their best to try to make it their own. The fear factor hasn't been banished from American politics; it is now bigger than ever. But that doesn't mean it's irrational. In the current economic climate, people would have to be crazy not to be afraid.

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