Joe the Plumber was being alternately hailed and vilified in the
blogosphere. He was a household name by the following day.
In the final weeks, the presidential race turned really ugly. At
her rallies Palin continued to accuse Obama of terrorist associ-
ations, focusing on rehabilitated Weatherman Bill Ayers.
Chants of “Kill him” directed at Obama were heard from some
of the angry crowds. McCain bristled when civil rights leader
John Lewis accused him of allowing a dangerous undercurrent
of violence to develop at his campaign events. But anti-Obama
innuendo, slurs, and distortions continued to mark the McCain
campaign. Automated “robocalls” from the Republican Party
warned anyone who picked up the phone away from Obama
with charges of terrorist associations, involvement in voter fraud,
and nefarious plans to redistribute the nation’s wealth. Race was
rarely mentioned during the campaign (until the Colin Powell
endorsement was dismissed by some as an act of racial solidar-
ity), but race was always close to the surface. Democrats feared
the possible effect of an active on-line campaign that falsely but
graphically presented Obama as a Moslem with ties to al-Qaeda.
Supporters feared for Obama’s life in a nation that has seen more
than its share of politically and racially motivated assassinations.
So did the U.S. government, which had assigned Obama Secret
Service protection before any other candidate.
By mid-October Irish bookmakers were already paying off
bettors who had put their money on Obama to win. But his
supporters worried that polls that showed him ahead of Mc-
Cain might be distorted by the Bradley Effect. That phenome-
non was named for the late Tom Bradley, the first black mayor
of Los Angeles, who ran for governor of California in the
1980s against George Deukmejian. Overwhelmingly, the polls
showed Bradley in the lead. But he lost the election because,
political scientists conjectured, voters feared being thoughtOn Becoming a Leader0465014088_02.qxd:0738208175_02.qxd 1/9/09 1:33 PM Page 220