The John Lewis Race Grenade

from the WSJ.

Georgia Democrat John Lewis was a brave civil-rights leader, but that doesn't give him moral license to fan racial tensions today. Yet that's precisely what he did on Saturday by suggesting that John McCain and Sarah Palin were inciting violence a la segregationist George Wallace.

By raising questions about Barack Obama's relationship with terror-bomber William Ayers, the Republicans are "sowing the seeds of hatred and division," Mr. Lewis said. "During another period, in the not-too-distant past, there was a governor of a state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their Constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

Mr. Lewis's over-the-top analogy is nastier by far than anything the GOP nominees have said during this campaign. In any case, Mr. Ayers is white. The angry shouts last week at a couple of McCain-Palin rallies were ugly, but Mr. McCain earned boos himself by correcting supporters about Mr. Obama's ethnicity and calling him an honorable man. The Arizona Senator has also declined to make an issue of Mr. Obama's 20-year association with radical black preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, though that association is also about Mr. Obama's honesty, not race.

Mr. Lewis later tried to clarify what he called "misinterpretations" of his statement and that he never meant to compare the GOP candidates to Wallace, but the damage was done. Because of his civil-rights record, Mr. Lewis gets a pass from the media and his fellow politicians even when he makes incendiary comments. But with remarks like those on Saturday, he deserves to be seen less as a racial healer and more like any other politician who uses race as a sword.