The Obama campaign’s strong reaction to The New Yorker’s satirical cover portraying the Democratic nominee and his wife as flag-burning, Muslim terrorists underscores the danger posed to his presidential bid by the suspicions many voters still hold about him.
Campaign aides are trying to make Obama and his life story more familiar to voters through campaign ads and the Internet. But the rumors persist.
The New Yorker cover, published last week, conjured up every dark misconception about the candidate and his wife.
The illustration, titled “The Politics of Fear,” shows the couple in the Oval Office, a flag burning in the fireplace underneath a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Obama, whose name is sometimes confused with “Osama” by television personalities, is depicted in traditional Islamic garb. His wife is in fatigues, sporting an Afro and a machine gun.
The Obama campaign immediately denounced the image, calling it “tasteless and offensive.”
The cover was a satire on the caricature that Obama’s supporters believe right-wing detractors will seek to draw of the senator. Campaign aides concede, though, that Obama remains unfamiliar to many voters, which is what makes that kind of humor potentially dangerous to his chances.
Skepticism about Obama’s patriotism, for instance, is reflected in some poll numbers, such as a Fox News survey last month that found just 48 percent of respondents believe Obama loves his country “a great deal” compared with 64 percent for McCain.
“We still need to introduce Barack Obama,” said Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan. “This is part of the larger campaign objective to ensure people know his story.”
Of all the leading presidential candidates from either party this year, Obama was arguably the least well known. Only two years into his freshman term as a U.S. senator, Obama has had nowhere near the public vetting of his former rival, Hillary Clinton, or the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.
Adding to the mystery is the fact that Obama lived inIndonesia for part of his childhood, is the son of an African Muslim, and has the middle name Hussein. To many voters — more than 10 percent in some surveys — that background leads to a belief that Obama is a Muslim even after his elaborate and frequent confessions of his Christian faith.
University of Michigan political scientist Vincent Hutchings said Obama’s “personal biography” is partly to blame.
“When you have a candidate for whom so relatively little is known it is easier for these mistaken impressions to be developed,” Hutchings said. “But part of it is about Barack Obama. If his name was Leroy Jenkins, this stereotype that he is a Muslim would not have arisen.”
Rep. Artur Davis, an Alabama Democrat and longtime Obama backer, blamed the Internet, not Obama’s unfamiliarity.
“Jimmy Carter was unfamiliar to voters, Bill Clinton was unfamiliar,” Davis said. “It’s been commonplace in our campaigns. What has made this cycle unusually poisonous has been the ability of the Internet to spread this information in an uncensored kind of way.”
