Jesse and Charlie

07 July 2008 |permalink | email article

Jesse Helms, the ideological purist and hard-edged North Carolina conservative who died Friday, fought against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art.

In his uphill 1990 Senate re-election fight against Harvey Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte, it was Charlie Black, now John McCain’s chief strategist, who advised Helms.

Black recently suggested that a terrorist attack would “be a big advantage” for McCain politically – a statement Barack Obama denounced and for which the hardball conservative lobbyist expressed regrets.

In 1990, Helms unveiled a nakedly racial campaign advertisement in which a pair of hands belonging to a white job-seeker crumpled a rejection slip as an announcer explained that the job had been given to an unqualified member of a minority.

Helms went on to win but the incident has never been forgotten by Democrats and civil rights advocates amid a concern, with Black at the helm, that Obama might somehow be as subtly profiled as Gantt was 18 years ago.

At the time Black vigorously defended the “Hands” ad.  Asked about it 11/5/90 on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, he replied, “Well there was nothing racial about the campaign.”

When asked if there was anything improper about the ad, Black said, “Of course not.”

Another NewsHour guest, the late African-American DNC Chairman Ron Brown, again pressed Black, saying “You are a principal adviser to Jesse Helms. Would you advise him to run that kind of ad, Charlie? Would you approve of that ad, Charlie?”

Black responded, “I advised Jesse Helms to do what he’s always done.”

Given Black’s tainted reputation – and the presumptive first African-American presidential nominee on the ballot – McCain can choose either to remain silent, or speak out and make sure there is no reprise of such ugly and divisive racial politics.

Regardless of what McCain does nothing can prevent a copycat Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group from surfacing and implying that a black man “is not ready” to be president – a code phrase gathering currency within the inner circle.

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