[digg-reddit-me]I’m not sure I agree with Scott Horton’s claim that Powell’s endorsement as brilliant as he thinks it was. But I certainly agree that it’s resonance and it’s place in history comes from this:
Powell made clear that he was opposing a friend of 25 years at some personal cost but for principled reasons. He believed that McCain would make a fine President but he was concerned by McCain’s uneven response to crisis, by his selection of Sarah Palin, and by the tone and tenor of his campaign–framed on an appeal to the baser instincts of the population. Indeed, if one passage of the Powell endorsement is preserved by posterity, it will be the remarkable image he presented of the young mother of a Muslim soldier killed in service to country…
As a college student in a Muslim nation allied with ours told Horton:
Okay, perhaps McCain is not an anti-Muslim bigot, but he seems to think that the best way to be elected president is to whip his fellow citizens into an anti-Muslim frenzy. Our nation is America’s ally, but I can’t avoid thinking, watching the McCain campaign—is this man going to make war on us too?
This is why Osama Bin Laden has a clear preference in this election. It’s not that McCain is a racist or a bad man – it’s that he represents – both in America and in the rest of the world – because of his campaign and who he is facing in his campaign – an intolerant America, an insular America, an America that hates Muslims and foreigners – instead of the America that fights for freedom, that is new and young and refreshing and tolerant – the America Barack Obama represents.