Back in May of last year, I noted an aide to John McCain attacking Barack Obama's past drug use ("Obama wouldn't know the difference between an RPG and a bong") and suggested that we might see a similar tactic this fall:
Given Obama's racial background, the danger is that these attacks will be used to trigger ugly racial stereotypes about him, particularly once Republicans shift from bong jokes to talking about cocaine, which Obama admitted to trying in his first book.
So far, there's been surprisingly little evidence of this, but trial balloons are being floated.
First, John McCain's lawyer raised questions about why the New York Times had not tried to find Obama's dealer in a response to an investigative article about CIndy McCain's addiction to painkillers:
You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, 'Dreams of My Father.'
Then Rudy Giuliani returned to the issue on Fox News:
You can’t even — you can’t even raise these issues. And, you know, God forbid somebody would do some reporting on Barack Obama’s use of drugs. I guess that was the point that Mrs. McCain’s lawyer made.
Giuliani later backtracked, saying, "Now, I don’t think the Time should do that. I think, you know, the presidential campaigns have gotten bad enough. They shouldn’t do that." But he had already put the line out on TV at that point.
In a historical context, it's surprising how little racial imagery and rhetoric has been used against Obama. The efforts to portray him as a Muslim and associate him with terrorists have completely superseded his identity as an African American. But with John McCain calling Obama's tax policies "welfare," it's not hard to see how Obama's history with drugs could be used to appeal to similar stereotypes.
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