The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • A15

Filename: A15-MAIN-AJCD1015-AJCD created: Oct 14 2008 Username: SPEED10 Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008 MAIN 1 5 A AJCD 1 5 A Cyan Magenta Yellow Black 1 5 A Cyan Magenta Yellow Black AJCD File name: A15-MAIN-AJCD1015-AJCD created: Oct 14 2008 Username: SPEED10 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ajc.com 4 Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008 A1 5 HOW TO SUBMIT AN OPINION COLUMN: Submissions should be 750 words or less. E-mail columns to Ken Foskett at fax them to 404-526-5610. Columns submitted to the AJC may be published, republished and made available in the AJC or other databases and electronic formats. VINTAGE MIKE LUCKOVICH: 2004 Letters to the editor should be no longer than 150 words and must include a daytime phone number for They may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in print, electronic or other formats.

E-mail submissions are preferred. E-mail: Fax: 404-526-5610. Write: Readers Write, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, P.O. Box 4689, Atlanta, GA 30302. While Mike Luckovich is out of the today, reprinting one of his favorite cartoons from the past, this one from Election Day 2004.

cartoon normally appears Tuesday through Friday, and Sunday. More toons at ajc.com/opinion. Tie issue Blog on ajc.com/opinion: MORE OPINION: Jay Bookman: Blog about debate before and after John McCain and Barack Obama take the stage. Rick Badie: Should a criminal record keep someone from wearing a badge? Atlanta Journal- Constitution Thinking Right: Have your say. Weigh in with Jim Wooten tonight on the presidential debate.

NATIONAL VOICES Editorial excerpts from around the country Negative campaigning not the best tactic When John McCain and Barack Obama set off to run for president, they promised this would not be politics as usual. Given their political track records, there was reason to believe that. This campaign, though, looks very conventional at the moment. getting downright nasty. McCain warns of and says Obama is risky for Sarah Palin says Obama around with Obama says that McCain is in a and risk we just afford to The Chicago Tribune had an interesting story on Friday that sought to quantify the negative campaigning.

A score card, if you will. And is leading the game. A review by University of Wisconsin television ad-watchers found that 100 percent of the McCain advertisements were during the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 4.

That compared with 34 percent of ads. Widen the lens and you that since the start of the general election campaign, 73 percent of ads and 61 percent of have been negative, the same researchers found. Some of this is to be expected. Political pros will tell you that negative campaigning is employed for one reason: it works. And it may work especially well this year, when a lot of voters are angry and distrustful of politicians.

enough fear in the nation. It need a presidential campaign that stokes more. There are just three weeks to go before the election. This nation is mired in an international economic crisis. Americans are about to decide who will lead them through that crisis.

Who will inspire us? Who has the best ideas? These are decent and honorable men. They need to appeal to the best instincts of America, not the worst. THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, OCT. 11 time for John Lewis to rein in the shrill rhetoric By EDWARD LINDSEY I read Congressman John lament against Sen. John McCain and the tone of this campaign.

My thought was, there you go I have deep respect for John Lewis. His gallantry on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and his tireless efforts throughout the civil rights era place him in the pantheon of great Americans in my book. However, in the last few years he seems to have descended from this lofty perch and begun spending more time clanging shrill cymbals of partisan and needlessly racially divisive nonsense. Two years ago, he warned African-American voters in Atlanta that if they elected a Republican as chairman of the Fulton County Commission we would return to the days of Bull Conner and hoses. (For which he was subsequently shamed into apologizing.) Now, he claims that the campaign of McCain echoes the long-ago rhetoric of former Alabama Gov.

George Wallace. Is there a trend here? These are serious times that require leaders to be closely scruti nized and the Democratic nominee is no exception. Does Sen. Obama possess a warm, common touch or a cold you-poor-saps-who-cling- elitism? Do see-no-evil, blind-eye relationships with Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, convicted felon and cial supporter Tony Rezko, ACORN, the Chicago political machine and the Democratic liberal base a weakness on his part to stand up to friends and supporters when it is not convenient for him to do so even when they are wrong? Will this elitism and weakness take us back to the era of suffocating regulations, antigrowth taxation and big government that even President Bill Clinton promised was over? McCain is right to raise these questions and should make no apologies for doing so. That said, campaign supporters can go over the top and it is important for candidates to make sure everyone keeps things in perspective.

Last Thursday, I attended the U.S. Senate debate in Perry. The Jim Martin campaign and its union surrogates organized buses from Atlanta to bring in supporters. These Democratic Party activists repeatedly screamed slurs at Sen. Saxby Chambliss while he was trying to speak which included and I have yet to hear Jim Martin, Lewis or any other Democratic leader rebuke this kind of hysteria expressed by their supporters.

Contrast this silence to rebuke this weekend of his supporters who had gone too far. This is a tough campaign and it ought to be, given what is at stake. Hard questions need to be asked of both parties in terms of policies and character. While doing so, I expect my Republican Party to follow the lead of our national standard-bearer and make sure we keep things in perspective. My question to Lewis and for that matter Martin and Obama is this, you do the So far, your silence is deafening.

Ed Lindsey a Republican, represents 54th state House district. Campaign supporters can go over the top and candidates make sure everyone keeps things in perspective. Election and race READERS WRITE I just returned from participating in the state fair in Perry. Pulling the horses back home, I had to spend a few moments in a truck stop restroom. The walls were covered with reading must I am compelled by a sense of obligation to community to write a public response.

Continuing home, I listened over the radio to pundits dissect and spin the words of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta: I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov.

Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. George Wallace never threw a bomb, he never a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional I share fear that our modern Pandora, in the person of a naive and ambitious Gov. Sarah Palin, has already opened the box, released and legitimized the restless, envious, angry bile that has lurked for so long in a subset of the American electorate and has for so long been a stereotype of the old South. Who can predict where this leads? No matter who wins next month, the gates of racial hatred have been wide in the name of political expediency, and all of us will have to deal with the consequences. Dr.

ROBERT WALLACE MALONE Jasper Civil rights icon destroying legacy by advocating politics of hate U.S. Rep. John Lewis is slowly but surely destroying his pioneer civil rights legacy with his blatant racist attacks on political candidates. His equating John McCain to Gov. Wallace likens GOP rhetoric to hostility of News, Oct.

12) is no better than his attack on a Republican candidate for Fulton County Commission when he said: you think ing off dogs and water hoses in the was bad, imagine if we sit idly by and let the right-wing Republicans take control of the Fulton County Lewis continues to use the same tactics that he has decried for many years. While both the McCain and Barack Obama campaigns need to tone down their rhetoric, whether one is Republican or Democrat, black or white, it is sad to see a civil rights icon turn to the politics of hate when it is politically expedient. BOB MEYERS Milton We all must deal with consequences of racial hatred Shame on racist remarks about McCain I am appalled at the racist remarks made by John Lewis. When all else fails he resorts to You may not be a fan of John McCain but there is no way that he can be as a racist. idol, the Rev.

Martin Luther King once said he longed for the day that a man was not judged by the color of his skin. Lewis must have been asleep during that part of the speech. He speaks racist dialogue each time nothing else seems to be working. Racism will live forever as long as there are John Lewises around. Shame on him.

The Rev. King would be embarrassed of him and his comment. RICH ZOLECKI Lawrenceville silence lends weight to race-baiting John McCain thinks caught in an unfair bind because his opponent is a black man. If Obama were white, McCain would go after him for his longtime association with Jeremiah Wright, the incendiary former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, campaign insiders say. But Obama is black, as is Wright.

And McCain believes be tarred and feathered with accusations of racism if he made Wright a centerpiece of his assault on Obama. So, instead, McCain has exaggerated relationship with a white guy named William Ayers, a middle-aged Chicago college professor. When Obama was in elementary school, Ayers founded a radical anti-Vietnam War group, the Weather Underground, which planted bombs in government buildings. Years later, after Ayers was well into a law-abiding life as an education reformer, he and Obama served together on a non board. So McCain and his vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin, accuse Obama of consorting with Though he has largely resisted revisiting the Rev.

venomous rants, McCain has still been accused of race-baiting. a reason for that. all seen the frightening news reports of McCain rallies where some of his supporters scream or or with his at the mention of name. There is no evidence to suggest McCain is a racist. (Nor did John Lewis call him one when Lewis called out McCain last weekend for the ugly tone of his campaign.) The racism charge is divisive, destructive and overused.

Black activists, politicians and regular folks with a grudge cry all too often, shutting down civil discussion and, worse, devaluing the word. As a result, actual acts of racism are less likely to attract the attention they deserve. But feel too sorry for McCain. Throughout his 26- year political career, the GOP has used a strategy of blatant racial appeals to disaffected white voters, the most infamous of which was the Willie Horton ad that George H.W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis.

(Bush 41 is no racist, either, but he was not above using racially charged tactics to help get elected.) While he revels in the myth that a McCain never publicly objected to those tactics. So he be surprised that he is now associated with them. been dirtied by accusations of race-baiting because the Republican Party throws around racially charged innuendo. Moreover, McCain has not been nearly as careful in this campaign as he should have been, given this violent racial history. While he would no doubt try to portray any Democratic rival as (or, perhaps, more dangerous when the McCain camp goes to extremes to paint Obama as alien, unpatriotic or, as Palin says, someone who is around with Bush allowed surrogates to denigrate John Kerry as effete, elitist and most appalling, apparently French.

But that whip supporters into a threaten ing frenzy. McCain knows perfectly well that Obama is more likely to be targeted by a nutty assassin than a white candidate would be. the reason Homeland Security ordered Secret Service protection for Obama in May 2007, the earliest any candidate has been given a security detail. So why would McCain stoke the of resentment and risk igniting a homicidal maniac? why he was criticized by Congressman Lewis, who never said McCain was a segregationist, like Wallace. Lewis did, however, say that the rhetoric McCain and, especially, Palin have used reminded him of the of created and exploited by George Wallace.

McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with and if they are not careful, that will consume us Lewis said in a statement. Eugene Patterson, a distinguished former editor of The Atlanta Constitution, had something similar to say in a September 1963 column after madmen put a bomb into a Birmingham church and killed four little black girls: A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.

We who raise no hand to silence the mean and little men who have their nigger jokes. We who stand aside in imagined rectitude and let the mad dogs that run in every society slide their leashes from our hand, and spring. Perhaps McCain should read that column. Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.

CYNTHIA TUCKER MY OPINION.