By R M Austin
It was only in recent times that American political scientists and commentators noticed an interesting phenomenon: the Romney campaign continued to run an ad on welfare which was universally condemned as false and misleading. The ad features a proposal by the Obama administration to permit the states the freedom and flexibility to design welfare programmes. In a memorandum to the states the Obama administration said in part that it, “will only consider approving waivers relating to work participation requirements that can make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals.”
These were waivers requested by the governors of several states, including Mitt Romney when he was Governor of Massachussets. The Democrats have shared the letter written by Romney to this effect to the entire media. But it does not take long to realize that in this particular election, given what is at stake, ‘truth’ is a casualty, and it is really a question of appealing in any way possible to the worst instincts of your supporters.
In short order the Romney camp produced an ad in which a voice says that “under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you a check, and work goes back to being plain old welfare.” These words are related to a video in which white people are seen hard at work on various projects. The message is unmistakable and for those who have been schooled in the historical background and have the instinct to quickly sniff out anything racial, this ad was unfortunate and deeply disturbing. There were the usual denials. However, in the lexicon of the elements of the extreme wing of the Republican Party – white people in the South and the mid-West badly hurt by this stubborn and deep-seated recession and the unreconstructed racists in the South – the word “welfare” and the message of the video were clearly aimed at “non-working African-Americans.”
The research has shown that of the 12 ads posted by the Romney camp, the 5 which were repeated often were those dealing with welfare. In many quarters the alarm bells started ringing. It cannot be an unrelated fact that the emphasis on the welfare video has coincided with the release of polls showing that Romney is not doing well among African-Americans and Hispanics. In fact, in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll issued last week Obama scored 94% among African-Americans, while Romney polled 0%, if such a thing is possible. George W Bush and John McCain were able to get 11% and 4% of African votes, respectively. Among Hispanic voters Obama’s lead is also substantial. In the face of these dismal figures the Romney campaign has decided to go for all of the white votes available to them. Hence the importance of the aforesaid video. Of course, this alone cannot win the election for Mitt Romney. But such a strategy, allied to the efforts to suppress the African-American and Hispanic votes in key swing states, could yet prove to be a successful tactic.
Not all of the commentators have been coy about condemning the Romney camp over its racial tactics. To be fair Romney was not the first to dabble in racial matters. The recently concluded Republican primary was littered with racial allusions, from Obama being a “food stamp President” to barely concealed references to a certain ethnic group wanting to be paid without working. But what is different about this round of race-baiting is that it seems Romney’s ready smile and his affected bonhomie conceal an iron will and an adamantine determination to succeed by any means necessary. True, it has been said that for some politicians the end justifies the means.
The election of Barack Obama was supposed to herald a post-racial phase of America’s social development. This has proven to be an illusion. In fact, we now know that the 2008 election was one of the most racialised in the nation’s history, and that this carried over into Obama’s first term. In an August 27 article for the Washington Post entitled ‘Race and the 2012 election,’ Ezra Klein states that two political scientists, Michael Tesler and David Sears, “found that, to a degree unprecedented among recent Presidents, approval of Obama was driven by attitudes on race.” It is a disciplined politician indeed who can resist the temptation to fish in such troubled waters which were previously muddied by the unprecedented interruption of President Obama during his State of the Union speech, with the unfounded belief that he is a Muslim, the oft repeated canard that he was not born in the US and the strange assertion that he cannot understand the workings of American society.
The insertion of race would have been a disquieting development in itself. But allied to a number of recent trends the fact has to be confronted that America is not itself. This was the nation which through its thinkers, scientists, writers, and technology often appeared to be on the cusp of change, and indeed was regarded as the leader in things modern. All this has changed. Too many people in the US now believe that the rights of women should be suppressed, voting rights should be challenged, climate change is a hoax, Muslims have infiltrated the State Department, deficits do not matter and America can still dominate the world single-handedly. Those who have watched America’s admirable development after the Second World War, such Chris Matthews of MSNBC, shake their heads in despair over developments in the country.
This election has long ceased to be a mere contest between two political parties. More than anything else it has brought to the surface some of the most unpleasant features of the society. Among other things it has revealed that the racial virus is very much alive and that intelligent men seem prepared to use it for political ends.
