Barack Obama’s slip-up, in which he referred to “my Muslim faith,” is interesting for a few reasons. Obama’s critics residing in various anti-Muslim fever swamps are harping on it as evidence of Obama being a closet Muslim–he’s not and that’s not what’s interesting.
Obama’s slip of the tongue demonstrates three things. First, he’s getting rattled. While Obama is a bit gaffe-prone, his gaffes are usually political misinterpretation or naïve reactions to world events. (In truth, his gaffes are usually more serious than this, and perhaps not really gaffes at all, but genuine errors in judgment.) That the master of mellifluous oratory would get tripped up on a word shows that he’s off his game.
Second, the context in which Obama made the statement reveals a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to label the GOP as malicious slanderers. From the Washington Times:
The exchange came after Mr. Obama said that Republicans are attempting to scare voters by suggesting he is not Christian, which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said was “cynical.”
Asked about it on ABC, Mr. Obama said, “These guys love to throw a rock and hide their hand.”
“The McCain campaign has never suggested you have Muslim connections,” said Mr. Stephanopoulos, who repeatedly interrupted Mr. Obama during the interview.
“I don’t think that when you look at what is being promulgated on Fox News, let’s say, and Republican commentators who are closely allied to these folks,” Mr Obama responded, and Mr. Stephanopoulos interrupted: “But John McCain said that’s wrong.”
Mr. Obama noted that when Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin “was forced” to talk about her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, he issued a forceful statement to reporters that the line of inquiry was “off limits.” But he said the McCain campaign tried to tie him to “liberal blogs that support Obama” and are “attacking Governor Palin.”
“Let’s not play games,” he said. “What I was suggesting — you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you’re absolutely right that that has not come.”
You gotta give him credit for trying, but wow did that effort fall flat! Of course, the only people who peddled the lie that Obama is a Muslim are fringy bloggers and email activists, whereas the smears against Sarah Palin are printed on the front page of the nation’s leading newspapers.
Last, Obama’s campaign is starting to create its own bad luck. Really bad luck. It’s an unfair and ugly fact that Obama’s accidental reference to himself as a Muslim will live on as a damaging sound bite. But there’s a certain momentum for catastrophe–a self-fullfilling Murphy’s law–that begins to characterize a campaign in trouble. A few months into the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign barely managed to get out of the disaster zone. Both Obama’s VP pick and the Democratic Convention failed to do a thing for Obama, while Sarah Palin and the Republican National Convention breathed new life into McCain’s campaign. The latest USA Today/Gallup poll of likely voters has McCain leading Obama by ten points. With that kind of pressure, this is likely not the last nervous slip-up we’ll see from Barack Obama.
