On a website he calls ExposeObama.com, Floyd G Brown, the producer of the Willie Horton ad that helped to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988, is preparing an encore.Brown is raising money for a series of ads that he says will show Senator Barack Obama to be out of touch on an issue of fundamental concern to voters: violent crime. One spot already on the Internet attacks the presumptive Democratic nominee for opposing a bill while he was an Illinois legislator that would have extended the death penalty to gang-related murders.“When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. . Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?” the video asks.Though crime has taken a back seat in the presidential race to the war in Iraq and the economy, some Republicans think that Obama is vulnerable on this issue — and they hope to inject it into the campaign.Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona have some sharply different views on crime, but in truth, the job of president has little to do with day-to-day law enforcement. The vast amount of crime-fighting in the US is done at the state and local level. Critics say the issue of crime is used primarily to exploit voter fears and stir up prejudices. Richard Nixon’s pledge during the 1968 campaign to restore “law and order” was viewed as a subtle appeal to white racial prejudice. The Willie Horton ad that made Brown famous focused on a black Massachusetts felon who raped a woman while on weekend furlough from prison. Dukakis was governor at the time and supported the programme.“Presidents don’t deal with crimes. Governors and mayors deal with crimes,” said James Allen Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. “These are relatively fringe issues for presidents. Yet they certainly resonate when it comes to the electorate.”Brown is counting on that resonance. “There are many, many different votes that Barack Obama has taken over the course of his state Senate career that are going to show him to be absolutely missing in action when it comes to the question of controlling violent crime,” Brown said in an interview. “We are going to stick with this issue. If he thinks it is not a significant issue, then he should talk to Michael Dukakis.” Brown and Bruce Hawkins, a Republican strategist who works with him, said such ads were legitimate because, by stimulating a debate on crime and punishment, they could provide a window into the morality of a candidate.Obama’s campaign, and some independent observers, say Brown’s work is misleading at best. The political watchdog firm FactCheck.org has called the death penalty ad — which suggests the vote Obama cast made him responsible for three minority youths who lost their lives in gang-related violence —“reprehensible misrepresentation.”Obama supported a recent move by the US Sentencing Commission to reduce the sentences of about 20,000 federal inmates, mostly black, imprisoned for dealing crack cocaine. McCain opposed it.
