McCain Raises the Bar, Says No to the Name Game

I remember clearly the first time I heard Barack Obama's middle name. It was November 28, 2006, and the Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers was on Hardball. “Count me down as someone who underestimates Bar-Ack Hu-Sane Oh-Bama,” said Rogers, exaggerating his southern accent for effect. “Put me down as somebody that counts him out.”

Rogers was dead wrong, of course, about Obama's potential, but the smear lived on. I have met too many people on the trail, many of them non-voters, who will tell me an Obama Muslim joke just as soon as they find out I am a campaign reporter--often keying off his middle name. (Obama is, in fact, a practicing Christian.) As Jon Stewart put it in his opening Oscar monologue, “His middle name is the last name of Iraq's former tyrant. His last name rhymes with Osama. That's not easy to overcome. I think we all remember the ill-fated 1944 presidential campaign of Gaydolf Titler.”

This is funny, because troubling truths often are. Today in Ohio, John McCain was preceded to the stage by a talk radio host, Bill Cunningham, who warmed up the stage and riled the crowd with the Islamic-sounding name. “At some point in the near future the media -- the stooges from the New York Times, CBS the Clinton Broadcasting System, NBC the Nobody But Clinton network, the All Bill Clinton channel ABC, and the Clinton News Network -- at some point is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama,” he said.

To his credit, McCain, who was not on stage at the time, quickly distanced himself from the comments, even before the press could ask him about it. “I want to disassociate myself with any disparaging remarks,” he said. Asked if the use of Obama's middle name is proper, McCain said, “No, it is not.”

There is not much wiggle room there. If Obama wins the nomination, I am sure I will still meet people on the trail with jokes about his name. The question is whether the talking heads like Ed Rogers get the message.