Legal Commentary

Bloggers, and belatedly the mainstream media, have been sharply criticizing McCain and his campaign for the increasingly angry, ugly, and personal tone of their campaign rhetoric, which has played up the Obama-as-terrorist-Muslim-traitor-secret-communist, and which has prompted the over-the-top rage and hatred it has stoked and provoked in the crowds at McCain and Palin rallies. Video and reports from rallies shows audience members shouting "Kill him" and "Off with his head" and "terrorist" and "traitor" and "treason" during speeches and rallies. There are reports of racial epithets being shouted, at Obama and at members of the press. Susan Kuo offers some thoughts. The "kill him" shout-out has drawn interest from the Secret Service. And in a Town Hall today, McCain urged supporters to be respectful and not to be scared of Obama and apparently cut-off one town-hall questioner who claimed to be scared of Obama because he is an Arab. On the other hand, when McCain described Obama as a "decent family man," the crowd booed. And, in response to Obama's criticism of the divisiveness and ugliness of the rhetoric at these rallies, the McCain campaign said Obama was attacking McCain supporters and does not understand "regular people and the issues they care about"--which, to the McCain campaign, apparently includes whether Obama is a terrorist who should be tried for federal crimes.

Much of the noise has been virulent and ugly, playing, not subtly, to Obama's scary "otherness." Lowest-common-denominator, atmosphere-of-hatred-and-violence stuff. But I cannot buy the notion being floated that anything unlawful is happening. McCain and Palin have not come anywhere close to the constitutional line of incitement--no actual violence or unlawful conduct against Obama is temporally imminent or likely to occur as a result of McCain/Palin campaign statements. And I am fairly certain that no one in the campaign intends anyone to engage in violence against Obama. Nor do the random shouts in the crowd amount to true threats against Obama by McCain supporters. The Secret Service has a tendency, not unwarranted, to over-investigate everything when it comes to political leaders. But "kill him" shouted out at random in an impassioned crowd of thousands with Obama nowhere near the crowd, just does not amount to a threat. (Plus, it is not clear whether the shout was directed at Obama or Bill Ayers). In short, nothing I have seen or read about comes close to the line of unprotected speech.

This is not to defend either McCain's choice of campaign rhetoric or the response of their supporters--and, it seems to me, it is of a qualitatively different tone than what is coming from the Obama campaign or its rally attendees. And it is appropriate to speak out against and denounce the tone of comments (and to praise McCain for trying to put the breaks on it) and to call for a more civil discourse. But ugliness is not unlawfulness. And whatever criticism the campaign warrants for engaging in personal attacks and riling up the crowd, charges of engaging in "borderline incitement" should not be among them.