John McCain: "That one is just off the boat"

In his stump speech, McCain has taken to saying:

I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her.

This refers to the fact that McCain's dad and grandfather were both admirals in the U.S. Navy. Taken at face value, it is standard political rhetoric, designed to position McCain as a patriot. But he could say that, and has said that, without reference to his heritage. In fact, in the same speech, he said:

I've been fighting for this country since I was seventeen years old, and I have the scars to prove it.

Great! I'm sold! He had me at hello. McCain is a patriot! And, oh yeah, he managed to remind me he was a POW too. Bang! A lot of ground covered in a sentence. So why bring his father and grandfather into this? It's that dog whistle he's been blowing lately. To racist and xenophobic audiences, McCain is saying: Obama doesn't come from a long line of patriotic Americans. His dad wasn't born here. He wasn't like you and me. His dad was foreign. And, embedded in McCain's comment, and clearly relevant to his audience, is the idea that you can't be certain that Obama will fight for America because he is not fully one of us. He isn't part of our narrative, our collective struggles. He's new here. It's a racist and xenophopic wrinkle on the experience angle: Not only is Obama not as experienced in government as McCain, but he is insufficiently experienced as an American.

This builds on claims that surrogates and other fringe wackos have been making for a long time. It plays on the idea that the longer your family is in America- the more immersed you are in the culture, the more you and your ancestors have been nourished by its soil - the more American you are.

It's time for someone to say to McCain: That's offensive! That's racist! That's unamerican!