Ironically, in spite of John McCain’s reputation for getting along with Democrats and Barack Obama’s aspiration to transcend “politics as usual,” already there are signs that this presidential race promises to be among the ugliest in recent memory.

I will say this bluntly: the ugliness will by and large be the Democrats’ doing. More specifically, it is at Obama’s feet that the lion’s share of the responsibility for this ugliness will have to be placed.

Readers of this column know that I have not been a fan of McCain, and I have no interest in becoming an apologist for him now. But it isn’t McCain who is going to exploit inter-racial tensions by striving to milk “the race card” for all that it is worth. This is an enterprise over which Obama and his proxies will be able to claim a monopoly.

For decades, the Democrats have labored tirelessly at impressing upon the American mind the notion, now deeply embedded, that the Republican party harbors racial animus toward blacks and other racial minorities. So, for fear of perpetuating this fiction, McCain and the Republicans want to avoid like the plague not only playing “the race card,” but the topic of race altogether. Obama and the Democrats know this, and so they know equally well that if race is going to be an issue in this campaign, they can’t wait for the Republicans to raise it.

Obama recently told a crowd that it is only a matter of time before the Republicans make his race a factor in this campaign.

On its face, this may not seem to be a remark of any consequence, especially to Obama’s supporters. Just a moment’s reflection, though, reveals it for the “race-baiting” that it is.

One needn’t be politically savvy to discern Obama’s objective here. Actually, there are two goals that he hopes to achieve. First, he seeks to manipulate the American electorate into believing their basic motives for voting against him are racial in character and, thus, morally suspect. Second, he wants them to believe that by voting for him, they will show themselves to be free of all racial animosity and, hence, more virtuous than their fellow white Americans whose intolerance dares to prevent his “historic” presidency from happening.

This isn’t the first time that Obama has resorted to playing “the race card” in order to advance his own self-interests. During the Democratic primaries, he did his part to further the perception that the Clinton campaign and its associates -- like Geraldine Ferraro -- were “racist.” And his Philadelphia speech on race, which elicited orgasmic responses from the likes of Chris Matthews, was no more than a subtle exercise in “race-baiting.” His most recent comment falls into this pattern, a pattern that you can be sure will continue up until Election Day and beyond – whether he wins or not.

That Obama doesn’t hesitate to hurl racial innuendoes against his opponents is unconscionable. That he thinks nothing of doing this while simultaneously promoting himself as the only person capable of “uniting” this country -- a large percentage of whose citizens are affiliated with precisely that party to which he ascribes such malevolent motives -- shows the unadulterated insincerity animating his calls for “change.”

When Obama and his proxies try to deflect all criticism by accusing, whether explicitly or implicitly, their Republican opponents of “racism,” the latter should diligently refuse to go on the defensive. Rather, they should go on the offensive. Republicans should call out Obama and his minions for the race-baiters that they are, and they must remind the voters at every opportune turn of Obama’s long-standing friendships (“associations” understates the intimacy of the relationships in question) with characters who, to put it generously, indicated no interest in the least in promoting inter-racial harmony. They must avail themselves as well of every opportunity to remind voters of what Obama himself has said.

If Obama’s opponents took my advice and were determined to go head-to-head with his campaign over the race issue whenever it was raised, it is quite possible that Obama and the Democrats would come to fear talking about race almost as much as McCain and the Republicans do now.

This is a state of affairs that I long to see. Lamentably, given the Republicans’ past reluctance to engage race-baiters, coupled with their willingness to abandon their own when embroiled in racial controversy, I suspect that I will see it only in my dreams.