George Allen's Credibility Problem
by Jonathan Singer, Sun Sep 24, 2006 at 07:01:07 PM EDT
As Matt notes in the previous post, Salon's Michael Scherer did some top-notch reporting on Sen. George Allen's background and finds some rather disturbing facts out of his past -- specifically, that former teammates of Allen's remember the Senator having harbored some seriously racist feelings during his time on the University of Virginia football team in the 1970s. As Scherer notes, Allen opened the door to such an examination by claiming during a recent debate that he learned from playing football that race did not matter.
By contrast, Allen has pointed to a different lesson from his days of football playing in recent public statements. On "Meet the Press," he said his football career was an experience that taught him racial tolerance. "I grew up in a football family, as you well know, and my parents and those teams taught me a lot," Allen said on the program. "And one of the things that you learn in football is that you don't care about someone's race or ethnicity or religion."
Scherer goes through and makes a fairly compelling case that Sen. Allen was being extremely disingenuous is his description of his football years. You can read selections from Scherer's article below in Matt's post or check the whole piece out at the link above, but suffice it to say that Allen's claims are not backed up in reality.
This was not the first time in recent weeks that Allen has been caught misleading voters and the press. We all know, of course, about Allen's shifting definition of "macaca," the racially insensitive term he used to denigrate a 20 year-old supporter of Democrat Jim Webb. Additionally, questions about Allen's credibility were raised in the wake of his response to a debate questioner who asked him if his mother was of Jewish origin. As The Washington Post's Michael D. Shear subsequently reported, Allen's response was factually incorrect -- and he knew it.
Allen's heritage became an issue in the Virginia Senate campaign Monday, when television reporter Peggy Fox raised it at a televised debate in front of 600 business executives in Fairfax County. Allen repeated what he has said in the past: "My mother's French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. And I was raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian."In fact, Allen had just recently learned about their Jewish roots when he made those comments. Allen declined to comment, but his mother said she had sworn him to secrecy.
As bad as the debate over whether George Allen is racist has been for both his ability to win reelection this year and his chances at securing the Republican presidential nomination in four years, Allen's exposure as a politician willing to say anything -- including statements he knows to be untrue -- to get elected are quite problematic. Though voters might forgive Allen for what appears to be a past rife in racism (voters' forgiveness far from assured, but it is possible), it's not clear that they will forgive someone who has repeatedly lied to them during this campaign. Certainly the media will not. And as more sticky situations arise during this campaign, as they seem likely to given all that has happened in the past couple months, a candidate with a track record of dissembling and a campaign staff that won't answer reporters phone calls (Scherer writes, "Chris LaCivita, a consultant to the Allen campaign, hung up when a Salon reporter reached him mid-afternoon Sunday") isn't going to gave such an easy time spinning back into control or regaining the confidence and trust of voters.
Tags: 2008, George Allen, Senate 2006, VA-Sen (all tags)
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