Obama is making race an issue

Some years ago, at the Army-McCarthy hearings, the character of the senator from Wisconsin was laid bare. Sen. Joseph McCarthy launched a vicious attack on a young committee staff aide, using his stock-in-trade accusation of Communist ties. Special Coun-sel Joseph Welch responded: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness. … Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

In a recent appearance in Florida Sen. Barack Obama predicted how Republicans would campaign against him. He said: “They’re going to make you afraid of me [by saying] ‘He’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’ ”

Obama’s accusation of racism dismisses the fact that his opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, spent some five years in a Vietnamese prison in the closest proximity to other Americans of various races. They all suffered torture and starvation because they were Americans, not because they were white or black. To accuse Sen. McCain and his party of racism in the face of his history is despicable.

So, despite all hope that perhaps we had finally put the issue of race aside, here it is.

Who raised it? The Republicans? Sen. McCain? It’s Sen. Obama, who has decided that he can use race to his advantage. But McCain has made it clear that he will not tolerate anyone in his campaign using the race issue.

So Obama has had to drag the issue in through the back door.

Sen. McCarthy played on the early post-war fear of communism to gain and hold power, despite the lives he ruined and the constitutional rights he ignored. In the end, those acts brought him down.

Sen. Obama needs to take a hard look at the McCarthy example and decide whether he wants to continue down the path he has adopted.

Most Americans would agree that to introduce race into the campaign, as he has, was both reckless and lacking in any sense of decency.

Sen. Obama still has time to reject the kind of campaign his recent actions seem to presage. Should he continue down the McCarthy path, he will, sooner or later, pay the McCarthy price. But the damage will be done: He will have turned the clock back to the bad old days when politicians could say aloud — and get away with it — that the color of your skin mattered.