The uproar surrounding the McCain camp this week is only the latest in a string of race-related episodes that began a year ago and highlights how Obama's candidacy has thrown his rivals off balance. Most of them involve his fellow Democrats.
Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. overshadowed his own announcement that he would seek the Democratic nomination last year when he described Obama in an interview with the New York Observer as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
Biden later apologized.
In December, former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey endorsed Clinton and gave an interview in which he mentioned Obama's middle name and noted that his Kenyan father and paternal grandmother were both Muslim. Obama is Christian.
Kerrey later wrote to Obama apologizing and saying that he never meant to harm Obama's candidacy.
Bill Clinton was taken to task last month for comments that many viewed as racially tinged. As Obama was winning the primary in South Carolina -- with its heavily African American electorate -- Clinton dismissed the victory: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."
In a tour of black churches in Los Angeles before the Feb. 5 primaries known as Super Tuesday, Clinton offered a veiled apology.
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Clinton supporter, was pilloried as racially insensitive for telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that "you've got conservative whites here . . . who are not ready to vote for an African American candidate." Rendell later told the Post-Gazette that "I regret saying it because of the way it was interpreted."
This week, the photo of Obama in traditional Somalian garments during a trip to Africa was widely circulated. The Drudge Report said the picture came from the Clinton camp. The Obama campaign exploded in anger. During Tuesday night's debate in Cleveland, the New York senator denied knowing the photograph's provenance and said she did not condone such a tactic.
During a news conference at a Cleveland hotel Tuesday, Obama noted wryly that "I don't think that photograph was circulated to enhance my candidacy." But he said it was "probably not" reflective of Clinton's approach to campaigning.
Obama himself has not been exempt from the politics of ethnic and racial sensitivity. In the Tuesday debate, he was forced to repudiate the support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a history of anti-Semitic remarks.
