It is very rare that I agonize over a post. To be sure, I always try to be careful in what I write, especially when the subject matter is potentially divisive or controversial, but usually the words come easy. I have started to write this piece on the situation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright four different times and have scrapped the first three efforts.
It has now been 48 days since the Jeremiah Wright story broke in the national media. While I knew Rev. Wright was a somewhat controversial figure, I also had heard good things about his church and his ministry. I don't agree with much of his theology, but I still respect what he has done at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. That said, I was appalled at what I heard in those first sound bytes.
In what can only be viewed as a sign of how bizarre this campaign has been, the issue of what the Pastor of Barack Obama's church said in sermons - in some cases over seven years ago - has been in the news pretty much for all of the last month and a half. When I heard last week that Rev. Wright was going to respond over the weekend, I fully expected him to be restrained and to reflect the scholarly side of him that we have heard about. I did wonder why he was going on a four day media blitz, though.
The Moyers interview was OK, but nothing was settled there. Rev. Wright's message to the Detroit NAACP was exciting, funny, and showed his great intellect. There were a few moments that made me squirm, but there were also many moments where I appreciated his calls for reconciliation and his explanation of how our culture and upbringing make us different but not deficient.
Then came Monday's appearance at the National Press Club. I cannot presume to know what was in the man's heart, but what came across to me, and to all I have talked with - both Democrats and Republicans - was a man with a monumental ego. It has been said that an egotist is someone who will burn the house down to fry himself an egg. Rev. Wright did his best to burn down the house for his most famous church member Monday. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
Why did Jeremiah Wright do it? Was he in over his head? Did he misjudge the audience, thinking it was like his church, and not the hardened, cynical Washington press corps? Was he intentionally torpedoing the Obama campaign - burning down the house, so to speak - because he felt they had dissed him and thrown him under the bus? Whatever caused the outburst one thing is certain: The argument that he was taken out of context in those now infamous video clips vanished as he clearly stated his convictions about all of those areas - that the US government came up with the AIDS virus to inflict it on minorities, that the US is a terrorist nation, that 911 was retribution for the US's actions abroad, and that the US marines are no different than the Roman centurians who put Christ to death. Knowing now that he really does believe those things, how could those clips have possibly been out of context?
Time will tell if Obama's words today can effectively stop the bleeding. It was obvious that he was genuinely hurt and angry by the position he found himself in. The pundits are split when judging Obama's actions since this story broke. Some are commending him for trying to salvage the situation and not wanting to dump his pastor the moment he became a political liability, and some are taking him to task for not totally disowning Wright 48 days ago.
If Rev. Wright had been her pastor, I have no doubt that Hillary would have dumped him in a nanosecond because her political ambitions take precedence over anything and everything. I tend to respect Sen. Obama for trying and hopig to bring Rev. Wright into the process, essentially building a bridge to a segment of the African American church. And I might be wrong, but I think John McCain, given similar circumstances would have done something very similar to what Obama did. McCain learned the value of loyalty and integrity in the Navy. He has shown great respect for President Bush, a man that he has been at odds with for most of the last decade and who is, without a doubt something of a political albatross for the Republican candidate at this point. McCain has also shown class and integrity by not attempting to make political hay out of the Wright situation and being upset when others did on his behalf.
The question that keeps coming back to me is, why are we still talking about this? It is yet another example of how very strange this last year has been in politics. Who could have imagined that the news media would be captivated for 48 days by the words of a pastor of one of the candidates?
There is a lot about Senator Obama that America wants and needs to know about. But we won't learn any of it by taking about seven year old sermon clips from Rev. Wright's or playing the endless 'gotcha' game where the slightest gaffe or misstatement by one of the candidates immediately becomes the lead news for days if not weeks.
This is no way to elect the leader of the free world.
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