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March 19, 2008
On Wright, Race And The Race
We are back after an unplanned hiatus -- hey, life happens, right?
As everyone who follows American politics is now aware, Barack Obama gave a remarkable speech yesterday in response to controversy created by his association with his now-retired pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who's inflammatory remarks from the pulpit about racism in America have no doubt damaged his former parishoner's presidential prospects. How much, is not yet clear, but the situation is a real problem for Obama.
The speech was superb. It was honest and groundbreaking in its head-on tackling of the very thorny issue of race in America. Unlike Mitt Romney, who's supposed speech on his Mormon faith scarcely mentioned it, Obama did not shy away from discussing Wright; no way he could have, in our judgment, and survived politically. Rather, he once again repudiated Wright's overheated and sometimes anti-American rhetoric without rejecting the man, whom he characterized as family. Not dumping him was frankly crticial to maintaining the speech's authenticity. Throwing Wright under the bus after sticking with him and the church for more than 20 years would have reduced Obama to little more than a Romneyesque panderer.
The master stroke of the speech was Obama's ability to pivot the discussion from a specific response to Wright's damaging sermons, to an equally difficult but much broader discussion about race in America. While Obama refused to excuse Wright's comments, he did seek to explain the black American perspective that informed them - pretty effectively, we thought. But Obama also sought to offer the white American perspective on race (remember, he's half white too), and made a quite reasonable case.
Finally, Obama challenged Americans to approach race with eyes wide open, and begin to transcend it. He did not offer a naive wave of the magic wand and make it go away approach. Rather, he suggested a start at healing old wounds and beginning to move beyond. Again, quite effective rhetorically, and genuine but plausible in its aim.
The big question is, did the speech help Obama politically? Probably some, but it's too soon to say. We'll all watch the polls over the next week or two and gauge what lasting damage has been done to his campaign. We shall see.
We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that the timing of the Wright controversy was perhaps as good as could be expected for the Obama camp. That's right folks, the press may have done him a favor by airing this now. Think about it, for maximum electoral damage, wouldn't this story have been most effective two weeks before the next set of primaries begin, rather than six weeks out? Or from the Republican perspective in say, late September or early October? To boot, folks are somewhat distracted now by Eliot Spitzer and the cratering economy.
Insiders have known (including the Obama team) that this Wright story was coming. Recall that the campaign disinvited Wright from Obama's kickoff speech in Springfield, Illinois over a year ago. There was clearly good reason for doing so. Now, Obama is solidly in the lead for the primary nomination, a lead that virtually all experts acknowledge will be very difficult for Hillary Clinton to overcome. 80% of the primary states have already voted, and nobody votes again for another month, by which time the story likely will have lost much of its punch and Obama will have had time to rebound with a new positive narrative.
If you're the Obama camp, and you knew you were going to take the hit at some point, what better time than now? Surely not right before Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states vote. Surely not in the fall when the GOP would swiftboat him with it. If it had to happen (and clearly it did), now was the time. It's out there, you take a punch and a dip in your polling, but you have time to deal with it and recover to finish strong for the nomination. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
At the risk of sounding heretical, perhaps the Obama folks wanted this now. What better way for their guy to solidify his place in the history books than to take a potentially fatal hit like the Wright story, meet it head on, and rise again? Highly risky of course, but hasn't that been his entire campaign? Future developments may prove us crazy, or maybe not, but it's worth contemplating.
One last unrelated item from the GOP side of the presidential equation. A bit has been made on the blogs and in the press the last day or so about John McCain's blunder in describing Iran as having trained Al Qaeda in Iraq. Keep an eye on these blunders and how they are covered. An important, if subtle attack on McCain in the general election will be that the Arizona senator is simply past his prime mentally (think Reagan in the second term.) Gaffes, mental fuzziness, lack of knowledge of or interest in key issues, such as the economy will be used as a weapon against McCain, and could be quite effective. Remember Bob Dole falling off the stage in 1996?
Posted by houtopia at March 19, 2008 09:30 PM
Comments
** Throwing Wright under the bus after sticking with him and the church for more than 20 years would have reduced Obama to little more than a Romneyesque panderer. **
Then again, doesn't sticking with Wright -- and those views -- for twenty years for the sake of getting ahead in Chicagoland politics also expose him as a panderer of a different sort?
Posted by: kevin whited at March 19, 2008 11:13 PM
Well, I wouldn't necessarily equate sticking with the pastor and the church with countenancing his extremist positions.
I just don't think the speech would have passed the smell test if, after all those years of being a church member, (even if, as has been reported, Obama was hardly a regular attender) he renounced the guy out of political expediency.
I'm not saying the circumstances are ideal -- far from it in fact -- but authenticity was crucial to the speech having any real prospects for "success", defined here as benefitting Obama's presidential prospects. Obviously, the jury's still out there.
Posted by: houtopia at March 20, 2008 10:51 PM