So it's been 4 days since I've posted. Well, it is Easter weekend! :)
Since Obama gave his speech on Tuesday morning, I haven't felt that there was anything new to add concerning the whole Rev. Wright fiasco. This is not saying that the speech did or did not "work." It merely seemed to me that whatever there was to say had been said, and then some. Nothing in the 4 days since has really changed my opinion on that score, but I do have a few more comments before moving on to other topics.
Peggy Noonan's latest Friday piece in the Wall Street Journal says (in a much more poetic way than I ever could) that the voters will either decide that Obama can't be trusted because of his association with a pastor with such radical views or that he deserves plaudits for walking the fine line that included not disavowing his years of friendship with Wright, while still condemning his incendiary rhetoric. I think she is right, although I wasn't as impressed with the content of the speech as she was.
Clearly, Obama found what he perceived that he needed in his life from Trinity United Church of Christ 20 years ago. Wright had prestige within the larger black community in Chicago in the mid to late '80's and still does today. Has Obama benefited from this? I think one look at his career renders the answer obvious, from 8 successful years in the Illinois state Senate to 2 years in the US Senate to the probable nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. Along the way, he made the calculation that the potential downsides of his continued association with the church did not mitigate against the overall net positives. It probably seemed like a sound strategy till a couple of weeks ago.
The only way the Republicans will let this go is if McCain comes out in a public statement of some sort, declaring that he accepts Obama's explanation at face value, and calling for a "cease and desist" order to all attacks on Obama that are Wright-based. Knowing McCain's track record with such things, this is entirely possible, which is dispiriting if you are a Republican who badly wants to win this fall and sees this whole episode as just the chink in Obama's armor that may provide the opening we desperately need to chart a path to victory.
Jack Kemp was on Hannity & Colmes last night articulating this position. His thesis was that we should be attempting to defeat Obama through sound arguments that expose his fallacious tax policies and "soak the rich", class warfare rhetoric for the flawed economics that they are. I had two reactions to this:
1) I remember what happened in 1996 when Kemp, as Bob Dole's running mate, tried to stay on the high ground, not just all through his debate with Al Gore, but through the whole race.
2) I wonder if we need more people like Jack Kemp in politics today.
Dole and Kemp did lose that election, by about 8 percentage points, if memory serves. But, the subsequent 4 years of Clinton paved the way for George W. Bush's presidency, so the Republicans won in the end anyway. Clinton also accomplished virtually nothing in his final 4 years. And Kemp still sleeps well at night because he kept his integrity and reputation intact as an impeccably credentialed conservative, but a man of principle and generous spirit.
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2 comments:
Is Obama "letting differences go" and staying on where he has membership because he agrees with "his pastor" Wright enough on other issues? Or does this issue expose Obama in another way---was he as much a part of the church as he lead us to believe? In America it is not unusual for church "members" to show up on Easter and Christmas and not have a clue what is being preached at "their" church the rest of the year. Did he attend/support the church enough to know what it stood for?
Karen,
These are very appropriate questions to ask, under the circumstances. What you say about Christmas-and-Easter-only churchgoers is certainly true, but I don't think it applies in Obama's case. His entire spiritual foundation, by his own testimony, was laid in that church--something I didn't directly state in my post, but that he himself affirms. Obama sought out TUCC and Jeremiah Wright 20 years ago, and has never seen fit to leave. As numerous commentators have stated by now, if your church or mine were espousing such rants from its pulpit, we would hear about it, whether we were present on that particular Sunday or not.
My assessment, then, is that the answer to your first question is "Yes", but there is more. I don't think Obama realizes what this association says about him to so many of us, even though I also don't believe that he shares Wright's more extreme views (i.e., "US of KKK-A" and America hatching the AIDS virus as a scheme to commit genocide on black men).
As a final thought, I do think that Obama shares the underlying sentiment latent in Wright's monologues that America is a country where it is very difficult to do well or to improve one's standing in life. I will post about this soon.
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