Does McCain Think Arabs Are Not Decent?

Last night, responding to a woman at his rally saying that she feared Obama because he was an Arab, McCain took the mic from her and said, "No, no ma'am. He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements." There has been a lot of talk today that McCain doesn't believe that Arabs can be decent people.

When I first saw the clip of McCain correcting the woman, this isn't how it seemed to me. Maybe I'm giving him too much of the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I took McCain to be saying "no" to her whole premise that Arabs were to be feared. That he continued by saying "He's a decent family man..." I understood as him saying, in effect, "Obama is an American and believes in American values. I just disagree with him on several policy points so much so that I am running against him for President."

Again, maybe at this point, this is giving McCain too much credit. But when I watched the footage, the way he spoke did not say to me that he held any particular animosity towards Arabs or that he does not believe Arabs are family oriented. He looked like a man who was ashamed at what he allowed, and even encouraged, to be said in his name and was focused on calmly defusing what had become almost violent anti-Obama sentiment. He seemed to be trying to take any emphasis off the idea of "Arab" and replace it with what his base sees as "American values" - being decent and family oriented.

Could McCain have continued and said "Arabs and Arab-Americans are also overwhelmingly decent and family oriented"? Of course. And maybe he should have. That would have been some straight talk to an increasingy nativist and jingoistic base. But that he didn't, to me, doesn't say that he was implicitly demonizing Arabs and Arab-Americans, or Muslims, or anybody for that matter. He simply looked like a man who finally decided to do what was right, knowing that it would probably cost him the election.