“Never even heard of them”

I tried to hang with last night’s debate, but fled out of sheer boredom for the pastoral and murderous climes of Midsomer County. Ah, British murder. Anyway, I missed out on a real-time experience of John McCain’s “that one” statement. That’s okay, as it seems to be under discussion here and there on the innertubes.

I did see a reference to another McCain moment, one which I did have a chance to watch before abandoning the debate. This came in response to a question about the recently-passed bailout package. First, the take by David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun:

In TV terms, one of McCain’s worst moments came when a young African-American man asked how the Wall Street bailout plan was going to help members of the middle class.

“You probably never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac before this crisis,” he said patronizingly to the young man, using the question to launch an attack on Obama and other Democrats in trying to blame them for the economic meltdown.

The attack on Obama was not what mattered, but rather the insult implied in his assumption that the young man had not previously heard of two agencies most American homebuyers have explored or at least encountered.

And worse, while McCain seemed at times as if he would actually climb into the audience to make person to person, up close and personal T- style contact with some of his white questioners, he kept his distance from this young black man. And it was noticeable.

It might have seemed like a minor matter to some white viewers, but I wonder what sense persons of color made of that.

As I am of color, I feel eminently qualified to respond, and will do so by correcting Zurawik’s recollection of events with this fuller excerpt from the debate transcript (checked with other accounts, such as this one, which has a clever word tracking feature in the text). The quote in question in bold:

BROKAW: We’re going to go now, Senator McCain, to the next question from you from the hall here, and it comes from Oliver Clark (ph), who is over here in section F.

Oliver?

QUESTION: Well, Senators, through this economic crisis, most of the people that I know have had a difficult time. And through this bailout package, I was wondering what it is that’s going to actually help those people out.

MCCAIN: Well, thank you, Oliver, and that’s an excellent question, because as you just described it, bailout, when I believe that it’s rescue, because — because of the greed and excess in Washington and Wall Street, Main Street was paying a very heavy price, and we know that.

I left my campaign and suspended it to go back to Washington to make sure that there were additional protections for the taxpayer in the form of good oversight, in the form of taxpayers being the first to be paid back when our economy recovers — and it will recover — and a number of other measures.

But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis.

But you know, they’re the ones that, with the encouragement of Senator Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back.

Patronizing? Implying insult? I considered the possibility as I watched - as a person of color, I am pretty much obliged to do so - and dismissed it almost in the same moment, because There. Was. Nothing. There. I watched and asked myself if I could imagine McCain making the same remark, and in the same fashion, to someone who was not black. The answer: Easily. And why not? After all, this is a man who has famously admitted - more than once - that economics is not his strong suit. Why wouldn’t he assume that most people are as out to lunch on the subject as himself? That seems natural to me - very nearly human, even if logically flawed.

The only rationale for deciding that McCain was being condescending to this black man, on this occasion, is that the questioner was, in fact, black. Sorry, Zurawik, but that’s just not enough.

Additionally, a non-biased view of the exchange reveals McCain speaking directly to the questioner, making eye contact, approaching him, retreating in order to speak to address a broader section of the audience, then approaching again. The “distance” Zurawik describes was in his own head, not on the stage in Nashville.

There are reasons - many! valid! - to criticize John McCain. Impugning racism where it doesn’t exist is unnecessary, and - as a handwringing newspaper columnist might well put it - corrosive to the public discourse. Mr. Zurawik needs to check his assumptions more closely.

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