“Major American Presidential candidate publicly snubbed American Muslims and Arabs who wanted to support his campaign.”  You’ve probably seen headlines like this in recent weeks.

But here’s the thing: this headline could have been written about presidential elections in 1984 and 1988 as well as the current one, here in 2008.

Which candidates shunned the support of these growing American political constituencies?  It was Walter Mondale in 1984.  And Michael Dukakis in 1988.  And John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008.

For years, many Americans of Arab descent as well as American Muslims have effectively been shut out of the political process.  Yes, there have been several American Arabs elected to high political office.  In 2006 the first American Muslim – Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) — joined the US Congress, and many Arab Americans have also been elected to Congress.  But despite these important achievements, many of the causes and issues that Arab Americans and Muslim Americans advocate for have been sidelined because political contributions and support from these communities have been unfairly demonized.

UPDATE JULY 16: A version of this article also appeared at Pushback..

Twenty-four years ago the liberal, pro-peace Walter Mondale Democratic presidential campaign made what was at the time the most profound expression of how effectively American Arabs had been isolated from political life.  Mondale returned the monetary contributions of several Arab American PAC’s, saying that it was his campaign’s policy not to accept donations from that particular ethnic group.  This came at a time when Arab Americans faced persistent and powerful bashing in the mainstream media (“oil sheik” was perhaps the most popular stereotype at the time).  Mondale later apologized, but the exclusion of Arab Americans would continue.

Violence became a tactic applied to intimidate Arab American political advocacy  groups.  The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) had several of its offices bombed in the 1980’s, including the national office in Washington, DC, and the California chapter office in Los Angeles.  In that bombing, ADC’s California director, Alex Odeh, was assassinated.  His killers have not yet been found.  The campaign of intimidation did not stop ADC from continuing its work, but again in 1988, they found that ensuring Arab American voices are represented was not going to be easy.

Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for President in 1988, told groups like ADC that he simply did not want their support.  Meanwhile, the Republican nominee, George Bush, worked to court Arab Americans by insinuating that Dukakis would simply be Israel’s “errand boy.”

In addition to the political frustration faced by Arab Americans (most of whom are not Muslim), since the 1980’s, the number of Muslims in America has increased, and their political visibility has also grown considerably.  But Muslim Americans have found the post-9/11 American political landscape to be quite hostile.

Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, believing his pledge to roll back some of the problematic law enforcement provisions signed into law by President Clinton that had unfairly targeted their communities.  Of course, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to forget that pledge, and by 2004, most Arab Americans and Muslim Americans decided that Bush was not their candidate.

But in 2008, once again, the scene is hardly more welcoming for these communities.  The latest gaffe from the Barack Obama campaign – when volunteers in Detroit told two American Muslim women that they had to sit in a place where cameras wouldn’t see them – attracted a lot of attention (thanks in part to the work of very effective Muslim American advocacy groups in Michigan).  Obama apologized for the incident, but the presumptive Democratic nominee has yet to appear at a mosque, nor has he done much at all to suggest he would roll back the PATRIOT Act.  Obama has remained unclear on his position on other unfair restrictions on Arab and Muslim Americans like NCEERS.  Overall, Obama seems closer to Dukakis and Mondale than to an ideal candidate for Muslim and Arab Americans.

In addition to Obama’s failure to reach out to these communities, his campaign has had to deal with consistent, false rumors that he’s a “secret Muslim” (and therefore somehow an unacceptable candidate for President – another clear sign of the exclusion of Muslims from American politics).  Obama is a devout Christian.  As he fights the religion rumor, Obama has been unwilling to take on the mantle of decoupling “Muslim” from “bad.”  Rather than say it would be perfectly OK for a Muslim to be elected President, Obama simply says, “I’m a Christian,” and he has clearly tried to keep his distance from American Muslims.

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is hardly better at working to make Arab Americans feel just as American as anyone else.  Earlier this year, a single conservative website falsely claimed that one of McCain’s best fundraisers was “connected to Hezballah” (the Lebanese militant group classified as terrorist by the US government).  Rather than defend his supporter by showing that there was no truth to the Hezballah claim, McCain immediately moved to run in the other direction.  McCain kicked Ali Jawad, his former supporter, off of his campaign and disavowed all contact with him.

Today, it’s apparently enough to simply post a comment on a blog to completely humiliate a major, well-connected political donor (if that donor happens to be of Arab heritage).  So imagine how less well-connected Americans of Arab or Muslim descent feel about their chances in the American political system.  If you’re wearing a Muslim headscarf, you apparently should expect to be discriminated against at a political rally.

These high profile examples from Presidential campaigns are just the most visible examples of political exclusion.  There are many others, at every level of government.  A few years ago, I met a woman who ran for mayor of a Detroit suburb in 2001.  She is a Muslim of Arab descent, and sure enough, her opponent in the campaign used her religion and her heritage against her.  Her white, Christian opponent directly raised questions like: Can we really have a Muslim as the mayor of our town?  Would you trust having an Arab in charge of the police department?  She lost.

This sort of exclusion from political life is more than just frustrating – it’s un-American.  There is absolutely no evidence that American Muslims and American Arabs have ever moved toward “domestic terrorism.”  (Christians like Timothy McVeigh, the Unibomber, and the KKK have historically been the biggest “domestic terrorist” threat.)  In Europe, systematic political exclusion of Muslims and Arabs has often been cited as a crucial factor in persistent civil unrest and even in terror attacks like the 2005 London bombings.  What makes America different – or what is supposed to make America different – is that we don’t exclude people from American life (including political life) on the basis of religion or ethnicity.

There needs to be a constant vigilance to stop anything which harms the American dedication to inclusion and acceptance.  Both McCain and Obama have failed to show that kind of vigilance.  The strategy of pushing Arab American and Muslim American votes away didn’t help the political careers of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.  Fortunately, there’s still time in 2008 for these two candidates to do something different.