Obama, McCain: Defining the candidates

by Katie Fretland

The candidates for president have the next 118 days until the election to define themselves before someone else does it for them. Obama has faced scrutiny over patriotism, McCain over similarities to the unpopular Republican president in office.

Polling shows that a common word associated with Obama, the 46-year-old who spent less than four years on the U.S. Senate, is "outsider." For McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran, a word commonly used to define him is "old."

In campaign ads, speeches and letters to the media, all parties and a slew of independent organizations will try to paint their candidate in the most advantageous light, while playing up the opponents' weaknesses.

Thomas B. Edsall, political editor at the Huffington Post, opines that the campaigns for the White House take place in the "context of the contemporary politics of race."

"On the Democratic side, the drive will be to portray Obama as a success story, an exemplar of deeply-rooted American egalitarian traditions, significantly advancing the national commitment to freedom and justice," Edsall writes.

"On the Republican side, the effort will be, rather, to link Obama to the powerful negative stereotypes of black Americans that were once widely prevalent, triggering bias -- proponents of such ads hope -- and stirring up the kind of race prejudice which underpinned that other American tradition -- slavery and Jim Crow."

Read Edsall's full article in the Huffington Post.