Race to the finish

Orlando, Florida: Senator John McCain's campaign accused Senator Barack Obama of playing "the race card," citing his remarks that Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The exchange injected racial politics front and centre into the general election campaign for the first time, after it became a dominant subtext in the primary between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. It came as the McCain campaign was intensifying its attacks, trying to throw its Democratic opponent off course before the conventions.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, charged in a statement with which McCain later said he agreed. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

In levelling the charge, Davis was referring to comments that Obama made on Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone and negative advertisements that have been coming his way from the McCain campaign in recent days, including one released on Wednesday that likens Obama's celebrity status to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

"So 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," Obama said on Wednesday in Springfield, Missouri, echoing earlier remarks. "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. That's essentially the argument they're making."

Avoiding direct comment

With his rejoinder about playing "the race card," Davis effectively assured that race would again become an unavoidable issue as voters face a historic election in which, for the first time, one of the major parties' nominees is African-American.

With its criticism, the McCain campaign was ensuring that Obama's race - he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas - would again be a factor in coverage of the presidential race, and on Thursday it took the spotlight from Obama when he had sought to attack McCain on energy issues.

The remarks put the Obama campaign, which has tried to keep Obama from being pigeonholed or defined by race, in a delicate position. Obama did not address the issue himself on Thursday, and his campaign gingerly tried to tamp down the issue, saying that Obama did not believe that McCain had tried to use race as an issue.

"This is a race about big challenges - a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies," said Robert Gibbs, a campaign spokesman. "Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they're using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he'll continue to talk about."

But Obama has been the victim of some racist and racially tinged attacks this year, particularly during the primaries. Underground email campaigns have spread the false rumour that he is Muslim, and questioned his patriotism by falsely charging that he does not put his hand over his heart when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited. A button spotted outside the Texas Republican convention asked, "If Obama Is President ... Will We Still Call It the White House?"