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| Scenes like this have been used in some election material to stoke voters' concerns [GALLO/GETTY] |
In my travels around the country recently, I've gotten a pretty clear sense of the "nastier" side of this election campaign.
In Los Angeles, a sweet, elderly lady told me: "I've read some awful things about Obama" on the internet.
"If they're true," she continued, "he's not very patriotic towards our flag and towards the national anthem and things like that.
"I've heard that he won't use the Bible to swear in to be the president. I've heard that he's not Christian. He doesn't come across as a true American to me."
In San Bernardino County, California, the chairperson of the local Republican women's club distributed a newsletter with a depiction of a "food stamp" illustrated with a drawing of Obama surrounded by watermelon slices and a bucket of fried chicken - foods traditionally associated with derogatory, racist images of African-Americans.
In Wisconsin, a man decorating his house for Halloween put out a Confederate flag (the flag of the southern states during the US civil-war), and three dummies meant to represent African-Americans hanging from a tree.
Dirty tricks
It is not just local racist cranks, misinformed elderly voters, or low-level political hacks that are up to these dirty tricks.
McCain surrogates such as Michelle Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman, have tried to fan the flames.
An interviewer asked Bachmann on national television: "So you are concerned that Barack Obama may have anti-American views?"
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Palin has accused Obama of "palling
around" with "terrorists" [AFP] |
Bachmann replied: "Absolutely. I am very concerned that he may have anti-American views - that's what the American people are concerned about."
The rumours about Obama not being Christian, or that does not respect the American flag, and other charges have been repeatedly debunked by the mainstream media, but they continue to circulate and millions of voters believe them.
And why not? Fear is a trump card in the deck being played by John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin.
They have tried to cast Obama as a threatening - and perhaps dangerous - outsider.
"In short, who really is Barack Obama?" McCain asked at one rally.
"Our opponent," Palin told another group of Republicans, "is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
Stoking fear
Palin also referred to Republican-dominated regions as the "pro-American areas" of the nation.
Thousands of voters have received so-called "robo-calls" on their home telephones, with a blunt message: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organisation bombed the US Capitol."
Another unsolicited item millions of Americans are getting in the mail or as an insert with their Sunday newspapers is a 60-minute compact disc entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's war with the West".
Its full of images of chanting Muslims threatening the US, scenes from attacks in New York and London, and interviews with Arab children making controversial remarks.
The slick, documentary-style video being was produced by a non-profit group linked to Aish Ha-Torah, an Israeli educational organisation.
The group denies trying to influence the US presidential election, but the videos are being sent primarily to voters in battleground states, in what appears to be an effort to stoke fear and anger to affect the outcome.
Failing tactics?
In another instance of fear mongering, a website put up by the evangelical Christian political action organisation Focus on the Family features a fictional message from the future.
"Letter from 2012" purports to be written after four years of an Obama presidency.
In this alternate universe, American Christians would be discriminated against and denied their right to pray, gay marriage and gay adoption will become the law of the land, and gun ownership would be outlawed.
The letter says as a result of Obama's security and foreign policies, Russia will invade and occupy most of Eastern Europe and Iran would launch a nuclear bomb attack on Israel.
The politics of fear worked well for George Bush, the current US president, in his re-election battle four years ago, when his campaign portrayed John Kerry, his then Democratic rival, as weak and unable to protect the country from attack.
This time, though, the tactic is not working so well.
Despite the smears, polls show Obama is ahead of McCain, in some areas by a significant margin.
Voters appear less susceptible to the politics of fear - because they are genuinely scared about the collapsing US economy.
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