The whisper campaign against the President

President Barack Obama has his share of ideological enemies, from commentators like Rush Limbaugh who say they want his administration to “fail,” to Republican strategists who condemn his policies as “socialist.”

But in my regular forays into the conservative media-sphere — radio, TV, the internet — I find a kind of shadow chorus that continues to paint the President as an ominous figure, a Manchurian-candidate who is secretly tearing down our society.

One conservative group barrages me with interview “opportunities” on a daily basis with topics like these:

“Report on Obama’s Muslim Roots,” “America’s ‘descent into Marxism,'” “Obama Admin elevating abortionists over Army recruiters?” and “Will Obama take time for Christians in Egypt?”

The Drudge Report, once an influential trend-setter across the mainstream media, burbles regularly with ominous headlines about Mr. Obama’s purported messianic vanity, his misplaced ethnic loyalties, or his questionable attitude toward his Christian faith.

(There are even contiuing winks and nudges about the President being the “anti-Christ,” or a man who views himself in much the same light as Adolph Hitler…)

Some of this trickles up into our political discourse, with a handful Republicans claiming that Mr. Obama is intentionally trying to sabotage the economy and our capitalist system.

The truth, of course, is that Mr. Obama does seem to symbolize a significant shift in American society, away from the traditionalist “Moral Majority” social values and “laissez-faire” economic vision which dominated our politics from 1980 through at least 2006.

Through that quarter-century, our Presidents were either fairly socially conservative Republicans (for all but eight years) or Southerners or both.

For better or worse, they lived in the shadow of Ronald Reagan and his vision of America.

Mr. Obama comes from the urban North; and while he is a practicing Christian, he clearly espouses a very different take on the Gospel than Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.

His economic views are far more FDR than Gipper.

He has also embraced a “multiculturalist” foreign policy, one that attempts to see shades of gray in the world. A big change from George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” or Reagan’s “Evil Empire.”

These shifts, combined with Mr. Obama’s race and his personal history — the son of a Kenyan Muslim, as well as a white, Midwestern mother — have sparked deep alarm and resentment.

It’s not just about votes, or elections. It’s about a deeper social convulsion, about race and class and culture. These are volatile issues in American society.

While I sometimes cringe at the roaring anger of men like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly, it is the whispering chorus that worries me.

There is no remedy for it. Free speech protects all speech, even the most craven.

But at the very least, the crazy talk about Mr. Obama hating white people and the mad mutters about his secret loyalty to the Koran offer a stark reminder of how far we still have to travel as a society.

Your thoughts? Comment below.