In a Crowded Theater.

""Ma! Ma! Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!"

That slogan was not prepared in anticipation of John Edwards being the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. No, that scurrilous attack was launched by the campaign of the Republican candidate James G. Blaine against his Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland  in 1884. It seems that a woman of Mr. Cleveland’s acquaintance was simultaneously acquainted with several of his colleagues. When the inevitable child came along Mr. Cleveland stepped into the breach and offered financial support, as these colleagues were all married.

The Cleveland-Blaine imbroglio raises two observations of contemporary relevance. One, Mr. Cleveland was not married at either the time of his acquaintance with the lady in question nor at the time of the campaign. This left him with no spouse to betray or humiliate. Well might one ask, where’s the sport? Good lord, even Larry Craig had a wife to trot before the cameras.

Two, since the slogan took a man’s decency and kindness and used them to cobble together a venomous and mostly inaccurate personal attack I have to conclude that Blaine’s campaign was managed by the great-grandfather of Karl Rove.

Former President Jimmy Carter recently offered some observations on the context of Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during the President’s health-care-reform-I-guess-if-Max-Baucus-says-it’s-okay address: “I think it’s based on racism. There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not to be president and ought not to be given the same respect as if he were white,”

To be fair, Cleveland was only a candidate when subject to the Blaine campaign's abuse.  Are there examples of non-African American presidents being subject to extreme disrespect?

“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”

How does “You lie” compare with “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” on the respect/disrespect-o-meter? I know how I’d vote based on visceral fury of delivery, based on capacity to wound, based on capturing of the zeitgeist. But then, I don’t twitter so perhaps I am missing the piercing, elegant brevity of “You lie.”

“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”

This was chanted by hundreds of thousands (not 40,000 sad, motley tea-baggers) of (okay, pretty motley) protestors carrying signs full of hate and rage and loathing who surrounded the White House, furious with a man who was wrong, just wrong in the decisions he had made and the advisors he had trusted and who prosecuted an immoral war that ultimately cost the lives of 60,000 members of our armed forces. It is all our tragedy that that war is his most enduring legacy, for Lyndon Johnson did exponentially more tangible good for African Americans and for Americans living in poverty than Barack Obama will ever consider doing but then set aside because it won't be possible to achieve consensus with enough Republicans to arrive at a bi-partisan mandate.

So, Mr. Carter, if things head south in Afghanistan, I will be chanting because I oppose a war and don’t want to see young Americans die the victims of wrong-headed leaders and not because the president is African-American. I have to admit that my great fear is that if things do come to that point, many who oppose the war will not step forward because they won’t want to be seen opposing our first African-American president.

And I did see where you attempted to qualify your NBC remarks, Mr. Carter: “I think it’s unprecedented to attack a president, wishing he were dead, and equating him with animals and Adolf Hitler. That was the point that I made.” Sir, did you spend the years before and after your presidency in some kind of suspended animation chamber? I have personally held signs that were every bit as vicious and personally pointed and that often referred favorably to Hitler before (Nixon/Vietnam) and after (GHWBush/AIDS) your administration.

It seems to me that violently and vehemently objecting to the policies of an African-American president is not inherently racist. Quite the opposite, it is reacting to him as we in a free society are entitled to react to all public figures. Even Joe Wilson.

The president’s press secretary, Mr. Gibbs has made it clear that the White House is determined not to view citizens’ engagement in public policy, however intemperately addressed, through the prism of race. For that I sincerely salute the president. There are too many real issues of racial disparity, prejudice and injustice that need to be addressed in our society to allow this false issue to become a distraction.