Obama must fight fire with fire

The race card works in America, because racism is part of the cultural and historical furniture. In 1960, when Barack Obama's Kenyan father married Stanley Anne Dunham, a white woman who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, 22 states still had laws forbidding interracial marriages. In 1967, an appropriate year since it was the 'summer of love', the US Supreme Court voided all 'race hygiene' laws, still on the books in 16 states.

In 1988, Al Gore, running in the New York Democratic primary against Michael Dukakis, attacked the Massachusetts governor for supporting lax parole laws that a year earlier had permitted a convicted black murderer called Willie Horton to leave prison on a weekend pass. Horton used the opportunity to rape a woman.

Dukakis prevailed nonetheless and won the nomination. Then, in the autumn, the

Republican dirty tricksters began circulating photos of Horton, an identikit of every white's nightmare about what a black rapist kicking down the front door would look like. The leaflets insinuated Dukakis and Horton were pretty much on a first-name basis. The race card worked: it was a significant factor in Dukakis's defeat by Bush Sr.

In 2000, Bush Jr defeated John McCain in the South Carolina primary with the insinuation that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. (McCain and his second wife, Cindy, had adopted a child from a home in India run by Mother Teresa.)

Here we are in 2008 and the race card has made its inevitable appearance. True to the Willie Horton model, on February 25 someone in the Clinton campaign sent the Drudge Report a photo of Obama in Kenya, wearing a turban and what looks like a bedsheet, though apparently it is Somali ceremonial rig. Obama's team cried foul. Maggie Williams, now running Clinton's campaign, said Obama shouldn't be a wuss.

Already the Republicans are using the