Opinion

Moment of truth

Sen. Barack Obama was hardly the first one in modern American politics to observe that voters who are embittered that prosperity passed them by would "cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration."

All you need to do as look at recent history to realize there are political points to be scored by playing to fears that have little or nothing to do with the underlying economic stresses of people's lives.

Politicians from the right and left pander to these anxieties. They go into towns reeling from lost jobs - and watching their young people go off to an aimless war in Iraq - and the politicians focus on concerns about gun control, same-sex marriage, abortion, an immigrant "invasion" or the horrors of globalization. Whether it's Mike Huckabee flashing "Christian leader" or President Bush lacing his speeches with code words to assure Christian conservatives that he is one of them, religion is invoked in an open appeal for votes.

So if it's "elitist" or "insulting" to note that voters who are otherwise left behind in the global economy sometimes have misdirected frustrations - which can be exploited for political gain - then Barack Obama has plenty of company.

Naturally, Obama's principal foes, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain, are exploiting the remarks for all they're worth. Who could blame them? It was a rare misstep from a candidate who has been frustrating his adversaries with his deftness at identifying and articulating the electorate's craving for a message of hope and inclusion.

The fact that Obama said those words in San Francisco - in an off-the-record setting with his contributors - was an "aha!" moment for those who are suspicious of a Harvard-educated lawyer with a gift for the soaring oratory. For his critics, the setting itself proved the context was of condescension.

But the preface to Obama's "bitter" quote conveyed a clear strain of empathy with such frustrations. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them - like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," he said. "And they've gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not."

Obama erred in assuming that a "private" fundraising event was truly private. He also was wrong to try to give perfunctory treatment to something as nuanced and treacherous as characterizing a wide swath of voters.

It was, as he acknowledged, a "clumsy" moment. But it's neither elitist nor insulting to observe that fear and prejudice too often carry the day in modern American politics.