Obama "race card" controversy raises issue of trust

By Matthew Bigg - Analysis

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A dispute over whether black U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama has played the "race card" won't swing the election but could make it harder for voters to trust him, analysts said on Friday.

No African American has ever been elected to the White House and in a country where memories of racial strife and discrimination against the minority are still fresh, Obama must work harder to overcome his doubters, they said on Friday.

References to the Democratic senator's race, if they are seen as clumsy, do not help Obama make the case that he is the most reliable choice to lead the country as it struggles with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an ailing economy.

He is locked in a close contest with Republican John McCain to succeed President George W. Bush in the November 4 election.

The dispute began when Obama, responding to a critical ad by McCain, said his rival was trying to scare voters by pointing out he had "a funny name and he doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five-dollar bills."

At first glance it was an innocuous reference to a well-known fact: Obama, whose father was Kenyan and mother a white American, would be the first black president in U.S. history and would thus look different from his predecessors.

But in the charged context of the election it provoked an immediate reaction. McCain said that by falsely presenting him as racist, Obama was shamelessly employing an underhand tactic to appeal for votes.

McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis said: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

Political commentator Terry Madonna said Obama's remark distracted attention from his core aim of convincing voters he was best equipped to handle issues such as rising gas prices, the home mortgage crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I don't think he (Obama) did himself any good with these comments. What he did ... is inject back into this context the idea about (voters') ... comfort level," said Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

"What he said is not exactly rap talk, black speak, but that is something that Obama has to be very careful about. He just can't let people believe that they can't trust him."

In an interview with National Public Radio on Friday, Obama said he did not believe that the McCain campaign had "targeted race issues."

He added, however: "I will say that the way that they've amplified this, you know, has been troublesome. And the eagerness with which they've done it indicates they think they can exploit this politically.

"But, in fact, what I have said, and there's no doubt about this, they've said it themselves, is that they want to make me appear risky to the American people."

RACE ISSUE AS MINEFIELD