I find it deeply troubling that, from all available evidence, Senator John McCain seems to be ceding the black vote to Barack Obama. Which places McCain in a damned-if-you-do situation. John McCain is nothing at all like George Bush. He is, in many ways, the Anti-Bush. The McCain campaign of 2000 looked an awful lot like the Obama campaign of 2008. McCain 2000 was all about hope, bristling with great ideas and a positive tone. McCain 2008 is a meandering mess: his message thus far: Don’t Vote For The Black Kid.

There’s not a lot being said about John

McCain in our Sunday services. For decades, now, Republicans have been the enemy, the adversary. So much so that it’s become common to accept Republicans as such without making the call on the merits. It is to the point that the Democratic party has taken the black vote for granted for decades, likely since Kennedy. Republicans have not done a whole lot for black people since the first Republican—Abraham Lincoln—freed the slaves, which his own party fairly hated him for doing because it cost well-to-do white folk money. Money has always been the central theme of Republicans, who, as I see it, want smaller government so they have less regulation so they can make more money. They advocate aggressive capitalism that favors the rich, figuring, somehow, the poor will inevitably prosper as the wealth trickles down. The problem is, rich folk get rich usually by exploiting less fortunate people, and they stay rich by stopping the leaks that enable their bounty to trickle anywhere. While we tend to think of America as a democracy, it is in fact a republic. We don’t elect our leaders, we elect people who elect our leaders. And the disenfranchised tend to not care which white guy gets elected to what since history has shown us it doesn’t really matter: our situation will likely not change. Thus, the knee-jerk reaction from most African Americans is to support the Democratic candidate—whomever he is—and boo the Republican candidate—whomever he is—fitting him for a black hat. And, in that context, what an odd election this must be.

A hero of the Vietnam war and, from all reports, a genuinely kind and engaged man, Senator John McCain of Arizona is quite Lincoln-esque in the way he tends to irritate factions of his own party, usually the factions who want to own him. From my chair, the Republican party has been pretty big on ownership, on demanding its members stick to the talking points. John McCain has a long record of irritating most everyone by defying expectations and crossing political aisles (and landmines) to get things done. These days he's getting a bad rap because, again from my chair, he's running a bad campaign. He's not really running his campaign, he's running a campaign designed to hold the splintered GOP conservative base together. McCain is not a figure that would inspire those factions, who would prefer a well-scripted Ronald Reagan or a frighteningly disengaged George W. Bush, to unity.

As a result, he's having a hard time defining himself. Under increased public scrutiny, his news cycles are continually usurped by gaffes (he claimed Iran, run by Shiite extremists, was training all Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim terrorist group who despise Shiites; more recently he called the Czech Republic "Czechoslovakia," which it hasn't been in nearly a decade), and his recent admission that he was "learning the Internet" just reinforces the perception that he is a relic of a bygone era. A more focused, more daring campaign would likely jettison the right-wingers, whom he won't please no matter what, and would make history with McCain running against type, returning to his Maverick roots and giving Barrack Obama a run for his money by outflanking him on the left. Running as a moderate, McCain has tremendous appeal: experience, a long record of not being in anybody's pocket, vision for leadership and the skills to get his agenda through Congress. He is not so far right that moderates and independents can identify with him. He is a unique and curious choice for a Republican nominee, one whose greatest liability, right now, is that he is, in fact, the Republican nominee. That he's wasting money and energy trying to hold his party together, when he's not the guy who can do that. Maybe Jeb Bush can do that. If McCain worried less about party and more about electoral math, he'd be running a completely different campaign.

As is, he is running a campaign that allows the Obama campaign to whack him like a piñata: the old man, the old, farty establishment. And a guy who got into bed with a man he couldn't stand, George W. Bush, in an effort to stay alive. I believe it's possible for the Obama campaign to attack McCain for being disingenuous. Yes, there are genuine policy differences between the two men, but McCain is not nearly as conservative as he's trying to sell us on, and he has the bi-partisan record to prove it. McCain's great strength in this race is the very thing he's trying to play down: that, in many ways, he's not all that far way from Senator Obama. What could hurt Obama is for McCain to snap out of his coma, re-board the Straight Talk Express and start ticking off Republicans again. He'd lose a lot of the GOP faithful, but he'd end up hurting Obama more, because he'd start sucking the oxygen out of the room as the independents, conservative Democrats and those nervous about voting for a black man look his way.

Which, ironically, could make McCain the poster child for Race Fear in this country, independents and conservative Democrats giving him a hard look and extra play because he's the white guy running. Of the two guys running, only John McCain actually looks like a president. Racism being so prevalent in this country (among blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians), it is likely there are huge numbers of voters looking for an excuse to not vote for Obama. Many of these folks are probably bothered by that reality; that their reluctance to vote for Obama has nothing to do with Obama or his record or the fist bump or whatever. In places many liberals hate to look, there it is—racism. John McCain could benefit from this Race Fear, as distasteful as he may find that possibility, if he'd just stop pandering to the Joe McCarthy crowd. Every time he runs around declaring himself to be a Reagan conservative, he loses whatever interest the middle or left might have in him. Not because he's a conservative, but because he's a liar. I don't doubt the senator has conservative views, that's a matter of record. But also a matter of record is he's a nice guy who faces political realities and gets things done by moving to the middle. That's his strength. Why he chooses to not campaign on it is a mystery to me.

I find it deeply troubling that, from all available evidence, Senator John McCain seems to be ceding the black vote to Barack Obama. Which places McCain in a damned-if-you-do situation. His campaign is woefully underfunded and subject to spending limits because he is accepting public financing. McCain has to be very careful where he spends his money. Buying airtime and print ads to show blacks supporting him likely seems a waste of time and money. However, not speaking to African Americans in any measurable way reinforces the Bush brand on the Republican party, the president having refused to speak at the NAACP’s national convention for four consecutive years (2000-2004) and having spent the last seven years talking across us at the dinner table.