By Chuck Raasch
Gannett News Service
May 04, 2008 09:21 pm
—
WASHINGTON — Here’s where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright went wrong.
Barack Obama’s former pastor said in a raucous news conference at the National Press Club this week that the tempest surrounding a few of his more contentious sound bites was an attack on the black church.
But this tempest was about whether the man who might be the next president agreed with some of Wright’s more controversial pronouncements on race and the American government that have been splashed all over YouTube and other visual mediums over the last month.
Obama had described Wright as a spiritual adviser. The National Press Club appearance breached that claim forever.
Wright didn’t back down from claims the government might have invented AIDS to kill blacks, remained unrepentant about claims that 9/11 was “chickens coming home to roost” for U.S. actions overseas and defended his claim that U.S. Marines were equivalent to Roman soldiers who killed Jesus Christ.
Obama called the comments “outrageous,” “destructive” and a disappointment from the minister that had married him and baptized his two daughters.
Obama himself said his relationship with Wright was a legitimate question for Americans to ponder as they learn more about the young senator from Illinois. Had Wright been Obama’s astrologer or political consultant or family member with similar views, the questions would have been the same. Does Obama agree with these inflammatory remarks? Were they part of his spiritual mentorship? The answer from Obama is no.
Will this month-long tempest hurt Obama? In the short term, possibly, because he was slow to recognize how Wright had offended many Americans who were still examining the soft clay of Obama’s leadership profile.
But if Obama wins his party’s nomination — and he still is in a formidable position to do so — he will have weathered the most serious character question of his campaign so far. And he will have done so by stressing the need to bridge racial and political divides.
Critics say this tempest obscured real-life issues like rising energy costs, the war and health care. But this is what happens in 16-month campaigns between two candidates who are clones on most of the aforementioned issues. Character and leadership inquests fill in pauses.
In this campaign in particular, iconic moments in popular and political culture have moved the tides.
First, it was the haunting “1984” YouTube video depicting Hillary Rodham Clinton as marching to an inevitable White House victory. “Obama Girl” portrayed both the excitement and the media boosterism of Obama’s early phenomenon stage. Clinton’s tears in New Hampshire humanized her and rescued her from possible January oblivion. Even “Saturday Night Live” weighed in with a spoof of fawning media coverage of Obama, and a more critical media eye followed. And then came Wright’s “God damn America.”
Wright can no longer complain he has been taken out of context. He provided his own context, such as when he declared Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan one of the most important voices of the 20th and 21st centuries. But Farrakhan has espoused too many racist, anti-Semitic views over the years to be considered important in the healing and reconciling Obama says he wants.
The National Press Club is not a church. But like Wright’s house of worship, it has its traditions that deserve to be treated as “different, not deficient.” One of those traditions is nonpartisanship.
But some Americans who saw the Wright news conference have e-mailed me asking why so many journalists were cheering him on. They weren’t journalists, but acolytes and supporters of Wright, who turned a news conference into a political rally.
Moderator Donna Leinwand, a colleague from USA TODAY, tried several times to point out the differences and to retain order amidst the breach of the club’s decorum. She did so with restraint even when the reverend personally attacked her for ostensibly not knowing what her pastor had preached the previous Sunday. There is no religious test for the Fourth Estate, at least not yet.
To write Raasch Click Here
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
