I have to agree with TNR (no permalinks; their site appears to have problems): George Allen just can't seem to get past a genuinely "creepy" public attitude towards race. In this case, it was calling a 20-year-old Indian-American a nonsense name, "Macaca," and patronizingly telling him, "Welcome to America."

TNR has done a solid job of tracking down Allen's strange racial actions and attitudes: growing up as a half-French child of football royalty, Allen reinvented himself as a Copenhagen-spitting, boots-wearing, Confederate battle flag-waving would-be redneck -- in other words, a stereotype he would have gathered from shows like 'Hee-Haw' (according to Ryan Lizza, Allen's favorite show) and 'Dukes of Hazzard.' Beyond that, his sister has charged that Allen was a sadistic sibling who, amongst other things, once dangled her by her feet over Niagra Falls.

Not exactly Presidential material, as these things go: it's one thing to have a black-sheep background, but another to have it documented on paper. Allen is tipped to beat former Secretary of the Navy James Webb in the upcoming election, but his Presidential hopes surely have ended by now.