Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Jul 13, 2008 at 8:35 PM Pacific

The Arnold Schwarzenegger Standard

I think it's well past time that the national media consider the differences between the standard they apply to Barack Obama and the standard they apply to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, and his father was a Nazi. That fact about his father was not known in America until August 2003, when the media reported it just a few months before the recall election which sent him to Sacramento. This wasn't a dirty trick; it was a new, previously unknown detail about Schwarzenegger's life, and it created a bit of a stir. But that stir quickly faded, mostly because it really wasn't relevant to understanding Schwarzenegger.

Barack Obama was born in the United States and has actually spent more time living here than Schwarzenegger, despite being 14 years his junior. Although Barack does have family members who are Muslims (his father was an atheist despite being born a Muslim), there is no equivalence between being a Muslim and being a Nazi. (What does it say about those who make the parallel?) Moreover, Barack's family history was widely known and documented well before the campaign every began.

Some might argue that Schwarzenegger is less exotic to Americans because he is white, while Barack is African-American. That argument, however, really only works for the subset of Americans for whom race is paramount. And those that hold this point of view would do well to remember that Barack's mother was white. Moreover, it has no bearing on Barack's family history. It's not like he's been hiding the color of his skin or anything.

The only element of Barack Obama's personal story that one might argue was a surprise was that there existed video of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. (But again, even before the campaign started, it wasn't exactly a secret that Jeremiah Wright was a bit of a flamethrower.)

Despite all this, the media has made Barack Obama's life story a much bigger issue in this campaign than they ever have for Schwarzenegger, who probably has more access to the media than any politician other than Bush, McCain, or Barack.

Obviously, my point here isn't to question Schwarzenegger's patriotism. I'm not saying the media has been too soft on Schwarzenegger. (As I recall, they did not give him a pass on the groping allegations, for example. But those were pretty serious allegations.)

You'd think that if anyone would hold it against Arnold that his father was a Nazi, I would -- my great-grandmother was murdered by the Nazis, and was an opera singer in Vienna. But I don't.

In fact, I admire Schwarzenegger, at least as far as Republicans go. And I think it's totally appropriate that the media treat him as if he were an American -- because he is.

I do think that it is both ironic and pathetic that the media question Barack Obama's Americanism more than Schwarzenegger's, however. What kind of vision of America must they have to do such a thing?

It's a question they should grapple with. If, as I suspect, they don't like the answers they come up with, they ought to change their behavior. There's still time for them. They can still help focus this election on the issues and character traits that are important to our nation's future. But if the past is any guide to the future, it's not something that will happen.