On today’s edition of “Meet the Press,” during which time Colin Powell dealt a body blow to the McCain campaign by endorsing Barack Obama, Powell made a brilliant observation that, frankly, I wish had occurred to me.
He commented on how people in the GOP party (he wasn’t talking about McCain per se, but the party in general) kept accusing Obama of being a Muslim. And he said the first and obvious answer is that Obama is a Christian and always has been. But the better and more appropriate answer should be–so what if he were? Why should some seven year old American kid who aspires to be president and happens to be Muslim be receiving the message that, because of his religion, he can forget about it? And Powell went on to describe a photograph he saw of a military grave with a mourning mother, and there wasn’t a cross or a star of David on the soldier’s tombstone, but instead the crescent of the Muslim. What does it say about this country, Powell wondered, that that kind of message is being sent out? That young Muslims can fight and die for this country but never be involved in running it.
It’s even more striking when one considers that back in 1960, JFK being Catholic was a HUGE deal because people contended that a Catholic shouldn’t be president because he’d be taking marching orders from the Vatican. One only hopes that forty years from now we’ll look back on the notion that a Muslim can never be president with the same “isn’t that a silly idea” attitude that we now look back on the thought that a Catholic–or for that matter, a black man–couldn’t ever be President.
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