DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

In February, there was an incident at a John McCain rally in Cincinnati. Before McCain arrived, a local conservative talk show host named Bill Cunningham warmed up the crowd. Cunningham is not one of the thoughtful, courteous conservatives. He's one of the mean-spirited conservatives who attack personalities as much as policies.

At the McCain rally, he kept referring to Barack Obama by his middle name, Hussein.

When McCain arrived and was told by his staff what was going on, he mounted the stage, apologized to Obama and repudiated Cunningham.

"I did not know about these remarks but I take responsibility for them," he said. "I repudiate them. My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign. ... I want to dissociate myself with any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them." (Cunningham later claimed he thought he was being complimentary to Obama by using "a proud Muslim name" and withdrew his support from McCain, which must have sent tremors through the campaign.)

What I thought was most interesting about this dispute is the assumption by all concerned that the use of Obama's middle name would be a handicap for him. Obama, in his reaction comments, made that assumption and certainly McCain did. McCain was asked if he considered the use of the name proper conduct for those associated with the campaign. "No, it is not," he said. "Any comment that is disparaging of either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is totally inappropriate."

I'm not saying they're wrong. I think they're right. But why should it be so? There is nothing in the name Hussein that, standing alone, is negative.

It's only the context of this campaign that makes it a negative. It's a little like the famous "daisy" television commercial that was made by the Lyndon Johnson campaign in 1964 to attack Barry Goldwater. (In the spot, the camera slowly zooms into the dark eye pupil of a little girl picking daisies in a field while Johnson's voice talks about the making "a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the darkness" - and a countdown is followed by a mushroom cloud.) As it happens, the commercial never mentioned Goldwater. In fact, one Johnson campaign official called it an anti-Johnson spot. Standing alone, it didn't attack anyone. Only in the context of Goldwater's loose talk about use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam and Europe did it become an anti-Goldwater spot.

There is plenty of evidence that the public is taken in by tricks like Cunningham's. In 1963, Varick Tunney (son of boxer Gene Tunney) was considering running for the U.S. House in California. His friend, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, passed along a piece of advice from his brother the president -- discontinue the use of the name Varick (it was the name of a colonial ancestor) that he had used all his life. Tunney ran a public opinion poll and found that voters associated the name with the Soviet Union or communism. He started using his first name, John, and was elected to the House and then the Senate.

In 1981 ABC had a new television series called "The Greatest American Hero." It was a superhero program, with William Katt starring as "Ralph Hinkley," the secret identity of the superhero. The program began running on March 18, 1981 and John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan on March 30. "Ralph Hinkley" became "Ralph Hanley," though as time passed and memories faded, the program changed back to Hinkley again.

This kind of thing sounds ridiculous, yet the evidence (such as Tunney's opinion survey) is there that we respond to this kind of thing.

There is a body of thought that in trying to educate the entire population, we have made it impossible to endow every student with some qualities they had in the days of classical education, particularly critical thinking. Whatever the reason, it's enormously demoralizing that we can be manipulated so easily by the likes of Bill Cunningham.