A fine brother in Christ over at Baptistlife.com followed up the Obama quote to which Krauthammer refers in his column below. Searching the Washington Post he found:
Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.
Ambiguity is a problem almost inherent in any English sentence but especially this one. Who is the “they” who will try to turn people against Obama because of how he looks? Bush or McCain? A more likely reading is that “they” depends grammatically upon “nobody” in the opening clause. So that it is not Bush or McCain who allegedly will engage in race baiting – but rather this anonymous “they”.
So… perhaps Krauthammer overreaches when he accuses Obama of preemptively accusing Sen McCain and Pres Bush of playing the race card. That still leaves questions about who are “they” and why Obama preemptively accuses them of racism. But – we must be careful not to overstate our objections to a particular candidate.
