Ralph's Race Card

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008 7:44 AM

I had hoped to get through the entire campaign without writing about Ralph Nader.

I mean, if Nader wants to keep running for president until he keels over, that's his right. But I'm not sure why we in the media need to keep covering him at this point.

He was a tireless consumer advocate who essentially created the modern movement. He was a factor in 2000, as Democrats who believe he cost Al Gore the election are well aware. But he has become a vanity candidate, heeding the call of nothing so much as his own desire for the spotlight. And his rhetoric about there not being a dime's worth of difference between the two parties rings particularly hollow this year, when the choice between the R and D nominees is unusually stark.

It's a shame that he's ending his career being perceived as a cranky Harold Stassen, but it's most definitely his choice.

I can tell you from personal experience, though, that Nader is quite media savvy. He knows he's getting little attention, he knows why, and he knows how to remedy that: by throwing a stink bomb. One with a pungency that the MSM would find impossible to ignore.

He did just that yesterday, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News:

"Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, of downplaying poverty issues, trying to 'talk white' and appealing to 'white guilt' during his run for the White House.

"Nader, a thorn in the Democratic Party's side since the 2000 presidential election, has taken various shots at Obama in recent days while ramping up his latest independent run for president . . .

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American,' Nader said. 'Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.' "

What can you say about that? If there's ever been an African-American candidate who went out of his way not to frame his message in racial terms, not to appeal to white guilt, it's Barack.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told MSNBC the comments were "reprehensible and basically delusional," but I wonder whether he should have just ignored them.

Later, a reporter asked Obama about Nader's blast at a news conference. "Ralph Nader is trying to get attention," the senator said. "He's become a perennial political candidate . . . There's no better way to get some traction than to make an inflammatory statement like he made."

And it worked. What Nader wants is media oxygen, so he appeals to the journalistic hunger for controversy, especially racial controversy.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey is, well, disgusted:

"Maybe Barack Obama was onto something when he warned about race-based attacks in the upcoming general election. However, the first such attack hasn't come from Obama's right, but from his left. . .

" 'Talk white'? Do people still think this way? Apparently Nader does, and the arrogance here is simply stunning. On what basis does Ralph Nader think that he qualifies to be the arbiter of black authenticity?

"Nader doesn't even bother to go for subtlety or code words here. He doesn't actually utter the words 'Uncle Tom' in this outburst, but the meaning is plain. Nader accuses Obama of selling out the poor and his own constituency in order to ingratiate himself with the 'white power structure'.

"I'm not here to defend Obama, but this attack is simply despicable. It demands, as the Left often does, that minorities subjugate their own opinion for groupthink, and that they offer no deviation from the Leftist orthodoxy, lest one give up their own ethnic identity and be called a traitor merely for having their own opinions. Whether Obama actually does this or not is not as relevant as the exposure of the Left's attitudes on racial identity and political individuality."

Instapundit: "I always thought of Ralph Nader as extra-white myself. So I guess he should know?"

Protein Wisdom: "Nader's attacks were every bit as incendiary as -- and more defective than -- the rear end of a 1975 Ford Pinto."

James Joyner weighs in at Outside the Beltway, questioning Nader's premise:

"It's not at all clear why black candidates have a particular obligation to talk about 'black issues.' Indeed, as a major party nominee, it's his job to forge a broad consensus on issues that appeal to Americans as a whole. Running as 'the black candidate' and focusing mostly on the issues Nader wants him to would ensure he'd lose."

Nor is Ralph setting the trail on fire, even in liberal Cambridge, says this Washington Post report, published the same day as the Rocky Mountain News interview:

"Nader is too professorial to really rouse his audience. When he starts hammering 'the bloated, wasteful and corrupt military budget,' a young woman lays her head on a friend's shoulder and closes her eyes, as if to nap. When Nader discusses the need for single-payer health insurance, an older woman dozes."

This can't be helpful to McCain:

"Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush's economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today, reflecting a sharp increase in public pessimism during the last year."

Don't know if you've seen some of the pundits gassing about Bill Clinton's incredible tepid statement of support for Obama, put out in a spokesman's name, but that may reflect his current temperament. At least according to Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:

"A Democrat who has spoken directly to Clinton about his feelings said that the former president remains 'miffed' for two reasons. One is that he feels that Obama's candidacy was essentially an anti-Clinton candidacy; that Obama ran against Clinton's presidential record at times, implying that it was timeworn, divisive, and damaging to the party while adopting policy positions that seemed to flow directly from the Clinton oeuvre. Why should Clinton embrace a guy who spent the past twelve months bashing him and his accomplishments?

"Two: Clinton is convinced that the Obama campaign went out of its way to portray the former president as a racist. Clinton wants a private meeting with Obama to sort these things out; he has reconciled himself to the reality of Obama's nomination and does not want to sit on the sidelines."

I'd love a transcript of that private meeting.

Andrew Sullivan is a bit short on sympathy:

"Clinton is still smarting from the San Francisco Chronicle interview. But the Obama campaign really wasn't all about Clinton. And a campaign that lumps all black candidates as unserious and directly appeals to 'white voters' did indeed flirt with racism. Let the old rooster sulk a little."

At Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan is on the arugula watch:

"A bit of detail from the pool report of Obama's star-studded Hollywood fundraiser:

" Donors sipped wine and bottled water. Waiters wearing black vests, white shirts and black ties served hors d'oeuvres: endive spears of brie, toasted almonds and truffle oil; tuna tartare with passion fruit ponzu and macadamia nut on wonton crisp; beef short rib skewers with Asian flavors.

"Clearly, one of Obama's potential vulnerabilities as a candidate is the image that he's an elitist who is 'out of touch' with working class America. This is an angle Republicans are keen to exploit, as we saw with Karl Rove test-driving the 'coolly arrogant' country club line just this week. And though Maureen Dowd is confident Republicans won't be able to get away with it, even the tiniest details like the ones from the pool report help feed the narrative, as you can only imagine how a beer-drinking, blue-collar Democrat in Ohio might react to news that Obama was hanging out 'sipping wine and eating endive spears of brie' with Hollywood liberals.

"My point isn't that Obama has to go to mega-fundraisers where rich activists are paying $2,300 a piece and serve them burgers and dawgs. But if I was advising the Obama campaign - a group that seems to be quite serious and disciplined about managing their candidate's image - I'd make sure that for every story that ran with details of glitzy, wine and brie fundraisers, there would be two stories in the news showing Obama eating burgers and dawgs with ordinary folks in places like Ohio and Michigan."

Well, maybe. But what does McCain serve at his fundraisers?

Speaking of the Arizona, here's a stunning, not to mention shocking, revelation in Politico: "John McCain Doesn't Work Weekends."

Imagine!

The subtext: whether he has the "vigor" to be president.

"McCain has done little to capture media attention on weekends for nearly five months. "McCain aides say that they made a conscious decision after it became clear that they had won the nomination to use weekends primarily to return their candidate to his preferred surroundings in Arizona and to have him rest, bone up on policy, and meet privately with aides, advisers, contributors and other prominent officials. "And, they contend, there was little chance anyway of getting much exposure on the weekends in the face of the other contest that dominated the news in recent months."

Has McCain undergone a tax-cut conversion? The New Republic's Jonathan Chait isn't buying the spin:

"Grover Norquist expresses his satisfaction with the current, tax-cuts-for-the-rich-loving, incarnation of John McCain. Norquist says, 'He was just voting against Bush in general. I think it was pique.'

"This has become a common explanation for McCain's liberal past. I don't really believe it. Certainly, when it comes to taxes, it's demonstrably false.

"McCain was attacking the Bush tax cuts as an unaffordable, morally dubious sop to the rich as early as 1999. I wrote a cover story at the time about McCain shocking deviation from the central pillar of Republican orthodoxy. The supply-side position is the one orthodoxy Republicans simply are not allowed to question. That's why McCain's alienation from the GOP was inevitable. It's also why he had to reverse himself in order to become an acceptable 2008 nominee."

Here's a story that began in the National Enquirer:

"Sexy CBS siren Lara Logan spent her days covering the heat of the Iraq war - but that was nothing compared to the heat of her nights," the New York Post says in a front-page splash.

"The "60 Minutes" reporter and former swimsuit model apparently courted two beaus while she was in Baghdad, and has been labeled a homewrecker for allegedly destroying the marriage of a civilian contractor there, sources said.

"Passions got so hot in the combat zone that one of her lovers, Joe Burkett, brawled in a Baghdad 'safe house' with her other paramour, CNN war reporter Michael Ware, a source said.

"The wife of Burkett, a US Embassy worker, claims the sultry 37-year-old correspondent seduced him while bullets flew overhead. Burkett's wife, Kimberly, also accuses Logan of teaming up with him to take her 3-year-old daughter away, according to the source.

"A close pal of Logan, who confirmed the allegations to The Post, said Burkett's marriage to Kimberly was already finished six months before they sparked up a relationship."

Which would mean it's not much of a story.

Some insight into the backstage booking wars from Greta Van Susteren. On Tuesday "at 9:00am I personally booked Reverend Sharpton to appear ON THE RECORD at 10pm eastern to discuss Don Imus. At 8:12pm, less than 2 hours before we were to begin our 10pm news show, I received a call in my office from Reverend Sharpton . . . he said that Senator Obama's campaign had called and asked him to appear on CNN at the same time he was due to appear on ON THE RECORD and thus could not make our show at the top. I told him that our first segment was the one he had been booked for almost 12 hours earlier and which we had discussed . . . he said Senator Obama's campaign called and wanted him on CNN and that he was sorry.

So . . . here is my question: is Senator Obama's campaign booking CNN now?"

Or put another way, is Reverend Al now a surrogate taking his marching orders from the Democratic candidate?

Perhaps the most buzzworthy item in recent weeks, other than Michelle Obama's $148 dress, was Scarlett Johanssen telling Politico that she and Barack are e-mail buds. Even Howard Stern was questioning how a presidential candidate had the time. Well, Obama tries to pull the plugt on that story line:

"Speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. 'She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me,' Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. 'I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship.' "

Scarlett, if you're feeling dissed, I'd be happy to pick up the correspondence with you. I could really benefit from your insights. Just have your people give my people the address.

Howard Kurtz is the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources."