McCain Has His Own Farrakhan

MORE
Joe Conason

• Show Us Your 1040, Mrs. McCain!
• Hillary Plays the Crazy Card
• Blame Wright's Enablers
• The Ritual Flaying of Carter

All on one page >>

Whatever their true private beliefs, presidential candidates in America are constantly required to provide proofs of their faith, often through their connections with various religious figures. Benedictions from the pulpit can bestow an aura of righteousness—except, of course, when the pastor or minister is a disreputable kook whose endorsement should be an embarrassment.

In recent weeks, both Barack Obama and John McCain have suffered exactly this kind of indignity, under very different circumstances. And their contrasting responses revealed not only aspects of their own characters but also the enduring prejudices of the national media covering this year’s campaign.

For an African-American politician seeking to attract voters of all ethnicities and persuasions, there could hardly be a less desirable supporter than Louis Farrakhan, the aging leader of the Nation of Islam. As the media never tire of reminding us, Mr. Farrakhan is a habitual bigot whose utterances have repeatedly denigrated Jews, Catholics, Caucasians and homosexuals, among others, seeking to inflame his followers against these supposed enemies. He detects conspiracies of “international bankers,” whose machinations he blames for all the world’s troubles dating back to World War II. He looks forward to a time when the Holy Land will be “cleansed by blood,” as he exclaimed in a sermon not long ago. He warns that the evil ones ruling the planet will someday be destroyed for their sins, while those who obey his admonishments (and tithe to his organization) will be saved.

Well aware of Mr. Farrakhan’s record, since both of them reside in Chicago, Mr. Obama forthrightly rejected the support of the unsavory minister. Unfortunately his own Christian pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has chosen to associate himself with the Nation of Islam, which may well create problems for the candidate—but at least Mr. Obama has clearly separated himself from the poisonous Farrakhan philosophy.

By contrast, Mr. McCain went out of his way last week to accept the endorsement of a Christian pastor with a deeply disturbing record of bigotry and extremism. That would be John Hagee, the San Antonio televangelist whose career is chronicled in God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, a new book by investigative reporter Sarah Posner. As Ms. Posner reveals, Mr. Hagee is the kind of evangelical minister who has anticipated the end of the world for decades now, even as he promises untold riches to those who tithe to his ministry. He is an ardent warmonger who, like Mr. Farrakhan, seems to imagine a Middle East cleansed by blood—except that in his fantasies, the Christians will be saved while everyone else burns in the lake of fire. (The saved won’t include members of the Catholic Church, however, which he despises and denounces as venomously as Mr. Farrakhan does.)

But the perspectives of these two self-proclaimed men of God resemble each other even more closely in certain ways. He, too, promotes hatred of homosexuals and demands that women submit to men. And he, too, imagines a conspiracy by international bankers, the Bavarian Illuminati, the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and other shadowy groups to deliver America into the hands of Satan. All that verbiage is merely code for traditional anti-Semitism, as Mr. Hagee surely knows because, like Mr. Farrakhan, he blames the Jewish people for their own persecution, including the Holocaust, as he explained a few years ago in a book titled Jerusalem Countdown.

Yet for reasons that seem more related to race than reason, the assorted inanities of Mr. Hagee are acceptable while those of Mr. Farrakhan are not, at least in the higher circles of the Republican Party and the national media. No matter how many times Mr. Obama rejects the Nation of Islam leader, a television anchor or a debate moderator will demand that he do so again, if only to mention their names in the same breath.

Meanwhile Mr. McCain continue to escape the hard questions that should be asked about his embrace of Mr. Hagee, whose ugly words and mad prophecies ought to repel him. Eight years ago, the San Antonio minister was among the political preachers, including Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, who denounced Mr. McCain and proclaimed George W. Bush to be the Lord’s chosen candidate.

Back then, the Arizona Republican proved his maverick courage when he rebuked them as “agents of intolerance.” He has sought to court their favor ever since—and it is sad to see him genuflect now to the same kind of demagogue he once mocked.