Oh so masterful is Barack Obama. He never gets his own hands dirty, no not he. He gets his gang to pack the heat. Think Rep. Jim Clyburn insinuating the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton is a racist. Recall the attacks on Geraldine Ferraro, the first women to run as a vice-presidential candidate, forced to resign from her position of advisor in Hillary Clinton’s campaign when an innocuous statement was turned into a week long assault, just long enough to deflect the campaign narrative off of the troubles of the Obama campaign onto the surging Clinton campaign then thrown off message when forced to defend one of its surrogates against charges of racism.

Two weeks ago when the American stock market crashed and the reality of the financial storm became front page news and John McCain’s campaign sunk along with the Dow Jones average, the McCain campaign made the choice to go for Obama’s jugular.

McCain, just as Hillary Clinton tried to do, decided to take on Barack Obama’s character by questioning a string of Obama’s relationships in his rise to power most notably that of his association with unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers.

Although the MSM would have you believe the attacks weren’t working, fully 36% of those polled said Obama’s association with Ayers would effect their vote.

McCain’s vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, went to town brilliantly doing her job as hatchet girl spurring on the crowds at campaign rallies to take a look at the Obama-Ayres connection. She accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," and the crowds ate up her words as if they were Halloween candy.

Whipped into a frenzy spun like cotton, the Republican bases’ frustration became evident. Even the MSM couldn’t ignore what was happening at the McCain-Palin rallies. While they focused on the few ugly and erroneous charges against Obama, including one woman calling him an Arab, they wouldn’t delve deeply into the real story that the Republican base was getting fired up, something the Obama campaign couldn’t tolerate. Many, not surprisingly, tried to blame McCain and Palin for deliberately inciting the crowds.

No one knows better what a fired-up base means to a candidate. Obama needed the African-American voters to come out in force in the pivotal primary in South Carolina if he were to comeback from his New Hampshire loss to Hillary Clinton after his big win in Iowa.

Obama changed the narrative and brought in Oprah Winfrey and she saved the day, whipping the apathetic African-American voters to come out for the first African-American candidate to have a real shot at the American presidency.

It worked.

So did Palin’s call to the Republican base to get angry. The frustrated crowds applauded McCain and Palin’s every line. But McCain isn’t the street fighter Mr. Kool is, anymore than Hillary Clinton was. When a man in the audience stood up and told McCain he's "scared" of an Obama presidency and who he'd select for the Supreme Court, the officer and the gentleman, McCain, tried to reign in the fever, "I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States," McCain said as the crowd booed and shouted "Come on, John!"

"If I didn't think I'd be a heck of a lot better, I wouldn't be running for president of the United States." By the way, McCain has consistently said that Obama's controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. will not be used against Obama.

What happened next will be scrutinized by those historians who handicap presidential races, but succinctly, Obama played his hand.

“I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his town hall meeting yesterday,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at an early-morning rally in North Philadelphia.

“I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Senator McCain has served this country with honor, and he deserves our thanks for that.” He then went on to question McCain’s ideas on the economy.

But Obama wasn't quite finished finishing off McCain. Saturday, Civil Rights leader Georgia Rep. John Lewis, once a Hillary Clinton supporter who broke his longtime allegiance to Clinton and came out in support of Obama, and now one of his gang, took it one step further when he accused John McCain and his  running mate Sarah Palin of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, saying there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse."

“During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace was a segregationist and one of the bigots of all time.

The statement seemed odd considering the day before McCain had tried ardently to tone down the rhetoric.

McCain replied, “Congressman John Lewis’ comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale.”

But there is always a method to the madness of politicians. Obama’s campaign inserted itself and in so doing elevated its candidate by making him look both the victim and the magnanimous, as he becomes every time Obama injects race in the contest.

“Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. “But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States ‘pals around with terrorists.’

“As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Senator Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead.”

Mission accomplished.

The Republican base has been silenced, Mr. Kool and his gang have changed the tune and McCain and Palin have retreated from their assault on Obama. Obama’s race was once again used effectively for Obama.

Obama is a street fighter. He learned his politics on the nastiest boulevard in the political world, the one that runs through the cesspool of politically derelict Chicagoland. 

Harvard educated though he may be, Barack Obama is a product of the mean streets having learned his style from the likes of William Ayres who believes that violence is the way to truth; from Tony Rezko who believes that money talks, from Rashid Khalidi, the PLO activist who taught Obama that to win against the Jews and the other power-brokers in the middle east  you have to out-intellectualize them and that means dialogue; from Louis Farrakhan who taught him brotherhood and therefore power is the solution to marginalization; to Reverend Jeremiah Wright who led Obama by example and convinced him you must fire up your base to get them to follow you.

Obama is cool all right and cold and calculating, quite willing to take on the best of them no matter their stature including a former president, whose reputation he ravaged as he clawed his way to the White House.

But there’s irony here if you can stomach its reality. As distasteful as his actions are the street fighter who is Mr. Kool and his gang is exactly the kind of president America needs in this critical juncture in her history. An officer and a gentlewoman simply won’t do.

All Content Copyright ©2007-2008. Reprints only by permission from
Halli Casser-Jayne/The CJ Political Report