Politically base

PRESIDENTIAL campaigns are no place for those with delicate sensibilities. But even by the debased standards of contemporary politics, newly-published memos by former Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn are cynical, at best. One might wonder why, in a nation of immigrants, strains of xenophobia still emerge during hard-fought races. The answer lies in part with campaign consultants such as Penn.

As Americans have heard again and again, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is the son of an African father and a white mother from Kansas. According to The Atlantic magazine, Penn wrote in campaign memos that Obama's "roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited" and that Obama "is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and his values." Noting Obama's claim to have a Kansas accent like his mother, Penn wrote that "his mother lived in many states as far as we can tell - but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up."

And with no hint of irony, the strategist goes on to spell out "how we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative."

Let's give Penn the benefit of the doubt, and assume he knows that the child of an immigrant - even an immigrant from Kenya - can be a fully committed American.

Presumably he knows that Obama, a fellow Democrat with policy positions similar to Clinton's, is not promoting some exotic foreign agenda. Penn is merely practicing an amoral style of politics, in which a tactic is acceptable if it produces an advantage over an opponent - even one of the same party.

The trouble with this any-stick-in-a-fight approach isn't that it always succeeds; it's that the wounds persist even when the campaign is over. Divisive campaigns by George Wallace and David Duke had poisonous effects on race relations for years afterward.

To her credit, Clinton didn't take Penn's advice in this instance. Maybe she concluded that voters are more open-minded than Penn seems to believe. The strategist described Obama as "unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun," and he scoffed at attempts to portray Obama's multicultural background in a positive light. "Save it for 2050," Penn scoffs.

The general election is still more than two months off. And to be sure, some backers of Republican candidate John McCain may try to use Penn's strategy against Obama. Indeed, a whispering campaign on the right continues to insinuate that Obama is a Muslim - never mind that he isn't.

But it's 2008, not 1948. Cynical operatives who see only fear and suspicion in the electorate may be disappointed yet.