A New Kind of Ugliness on the Campaign Trail

It's getting close, this presidential election we've all followed for so long. With Barack Obama showing strength in recent polls, the Republican Right has begun begging john McCain to take the gloves off and really go after Barack Obama. That's why you've been hearing Sarah Palin, and now lately McCain himself bring up Obama's alleged friendship with William Ayers. The clear inference is there's more to this story than the media has reported. What that is has become anybody's guess.

Yet Ayers is only part of a larger picture. Politico.com reports that as the McCain campaign founders, supporters at Republican rallies are starting to get ugly. There has always been an edge to those opposed to Obama becoming president. To say the edge is getting sharper the past few days is the height of understatement. There's the "kill him" reference at a rally at which Sarah Palin spoke, to the constant Barack Hussein Obama references by local officials, to a woman calling out "Obama Osama" at a Wisconsin rally.

It's no longer just political mocking, it's outright rage. And it's dangerous. John McCain knows this, and to his credit, has tried to temper his more rabid supporters. That effort is in part political, because he knows such nonsense turns off the very independent voters he must have to win. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, ignores the damage this rage may inflict on the campaign. In fact, she encourages it.

That stoking of the fires of blind anger has had horrible consequences in America's past. John Weaver, McCain's former top strategist, understands this when he talks to Politico about the "protection of our civil society" as a principle reason this rage must be tempered.

He might well have added, it doesn't appear to have made most Americans stop thinking about their economic well being.