One party appeals to bigots and xenophobes with its smears, encouraging distrust and suspicion of the opposing candidate. The other sows the seeds of distrust in the entire American political system. One attempts to benefit from the racial divide, the other risks making it wider. Which is worse? Which is ethically more offensive? 

Gee, that’s a tough one. Which is worse, a kick in the teeth or a punch in the genitals?  

The conservative Republican stage-whispering campaign that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim and terrorist sympathizer is persistent, shameless and ethically about as low as you can get. The cutely named attack-screed “Obama Nation” uses the worst kind of innuendo to plant doubts about the Illinois Senator’s loyalty without a shred of logic or truth, employing loaded musings along the lines of “Hmmmm….Obama went to a Muslim school…..I wonder what he learned there?” Picking up the theme have been talk-show bullies like Bill Cunningham and Michael Savage, who use Obama’s middle name to suggest that he is some kind of Middle East version of the Manchurian Candidate. Once that seed of doubt is planted, cultivation is easy. Reflecting on Obama’s controversial vote against an Illinois law ensuring that unsuccessfully-aborted babies that lived wouldn’t be killed anyway, conservative talk-show host G. Gordon Liddy, asserted, “No true Christian could vote that way.” Ah HA! 

Dishonest, cowardly, unfair: this tactic is far, far lower than any of the supposedly dastardly GOP smears of the past. The infamous Willy Horton ad? Dukakis did approve a furlough program, and Willy Horton did kill and rape while released from jail…and Willy Horton was black. The resulting GOP campaign ad played on racist fears, but it was based on, as Al Gore says, an “inconvenient truth.” The “Swift-boating” of John Kerry? Attacks on his war record were unfair, but the anger focused on Kerry by many Viet Nam veterans was genuine and, in their view, well-earned. The fact that Kerry really thought he could get away with simultaneously presenting himself as “John Kerry, reporting for duty” and still bask in anti-war praise for his testimony before Congress accusing his fellow soldiers of vicious atrocities proved that one or more screws had popped loose in his grand head. He brazenly laid the groundwork for the attacks, and got them.  

Planting rumors about Obama’s loyalty and beliefs is at a much more stygian level, a throwback to when whispering campaigns by Democrats in 1920 suggested that full-lipped Warren G. Harding was really black, or by Republicans in 1928 hinting that Catholic Al Smith was secretly in league with the Pope. It is no way to win an election: making the country worse in order to lead it.  

The Democrats, in contrast, have taken an approach that is no way to lose an election. At every turn, Democrats convey the message that their candidate cannot lose, will not lose, is destined to win, and win easily---unless the election is taken away, by cheating, by stealth, by a racist plot. We have had eight years of this theme from the Democrats now, and it has become part of the party’s culture. This called a flat learning curve. Democrats argue that Republicans are idiots and their candidates are fools and knaves; anyone who votes for them voluntarily is also mentally deficient, but there just can’t be enough idiots in America to explain the losses of the 2000 and 2004 election. So the system was somehow brilliantly rigged…by idiots. This is the core Democratic mantra. Irony of ironies, it is idiotic. But it is also irresponsible and dangerous. 

Little jokes from Al Gore and Joe Lieberman about how they were really the winners in 2000 were once excusable as venting by the victims of atrocious luck and the quirks of the Electoral College. But now it is no joke: despite polls showing Senator McCain and Senator Obama within percentage points of each other, the Democrats, and much of the media, are aggressively seeding the message that only a vile recipe of racism, stupid voters and underhanded schemes can defeat Barack Obama. After Obama gave a clumsy, hesitant performance at the televised Evangelical forum hosted by pastor Rick Warren (Obama’s “above my pay-grade” evasion of the Warren’s question about the rights of the unborn question is a good bet to haunt his campaign as “I voted for it before I voted against it” dogged John Kerry) and McCain trumped his opposition with confident and clear statements, Obama supporters immediately leveled accusations that McCain had been unfairly tipped-off on what questions would be asked. (If Barack Obama really didn’t know that he would be asked about the rights of the unborn during an Evangelical forum, the Democrats have a different idiot problem than they counted on.) The pattern is clearly set now. Democrats have decided to invalidate the election before it occurs. There is only one rational choice, they are saying, and if the Republicans win, it can only be because America is racist, or the election was rigged. Or both. 

This strategy would be unethical even if the Democrats weren’t the party nominating an eloquent abstraction with less governing experience than any Chief Executive within memory. It is insanely irresponsible when used to back a candidate about whom there are many legitimate doubts, mysteries and questions. Both parties deserve respect; both candidates deserve respect. And the democratic system deserves the most respect of all.  

But is the Democratic message wrong if party decision-makers and faithful really believe it? Yes, because the belief is unsupported by hard, persuasive, un-slanted facts, and that makes it irresponsible and unfair, just like the unsupported accusation that Sen. McCain was cheating at the Saddleback forum. After all, many Republicans and conservatives really do harbor dark suspicions that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim. Stupidity and recklessness do not make unethical conduct excusable. A belief alone is not enough to justify claiming victory for an untested leader with plenty of holes in his resume. Belief alone is not sufficient justification to lay the groundwork for race-baiting in the wake of an electoral loss in November.  

I’m a rational, informed voter who does his research and knows the issues, and I may choose not to vote for Barack Obama for any number of legitimate reasons---including the offensive attitude of his party---that have nothing whatsoever to do with his race. How dare the Democratic Party, Obama, or anyone shout to the media that my vote is motivated by racism? This is playing with societal dynamite. 

The Democratic message that the election is a slam dunk for Obama if America can only avoid bigotry and election fraud is a recipe for civil unrest, racial tension, and the unraveling of public faith in our institutions. It is reckless and offensive, and, take note, Democrats, idiotic. Over-confidence played a big part in the defeats of both Al Gore and Kerry, and arrogance has repeatedly derailed Democratic candidates from Adlai Stevenson forward, yet the party is trotting both out once again, with new racist and paranoid accessories. It makes their defeat more likely, and simultaneously assures that the defeat will do the most damage possible to the fabric of American society. 

So which party is more unethical? The GOP sliming of Obama is more dishonest and cynical, but it is hard to believe that many will be persuaded by it. The potential consequences of Democratic disrespect for its opposition, the electorate and our electoral system are far worse. The race to ethical disgrace looks like a dead heat. 

Just like the presidential election itself, no matter what the Democrats would have us believe.