Editorials on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright
Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Perspective/224790/
CHICAGO TRIBUNE OBAMA JETTISONS HIS PASTOR Last month, Barack Obama challenged this country to confront its racial divide, an appeal prompted by the backlash over incendiary remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. His pastor’s words —“ God damn America” being the most memorable—were “not only wrong, but divisive,” Obama said. Yet he did not disavow the man who said them. On Tuesday, though, a somber Obama did just that. He had no choice. The day before, Wright made it clear he did not regret the words or the reaction they had inflamed. He reveled in the controversy. “Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed,” Obama said. Wright’s words “end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate.” They do. And Obama is left to hope that voters realize his charge to move beyond our racial wounds is a far cry from Wright’s attacks on America, its institutions... and Obama.
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
WRIGHT OFFERS A TEST OF OBAMA’S LEADERSHIP The first time he faced mounting criticism over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama responded with an eloquent and important speech on race in America. It was an almost perfect defense, raising the level of the discourse from sound bites to substance. The Obama campaign no doubt thought it had the Wright situation under control. But after staying quiet for weeks, the reverend resurfaced, giving the 24-hour news cyclists more material to chew on and leaving the Democratic frontrunner temporarily befuddled. Wright, the sequel, represents another defining moment for Obama. Asked Monday about Wright’s return to the talk-show circuit, Obama offered this weak response: “None of the voters I talk to ask about it. There may be people who are troubled by it and are polite and not asking about it. It’s not what I hear.”
The answer was off point, and it revealed the Obama campaign’s initial uncertainty about how to respond to a problem that won’t go away. Obama was much more forceful and convincing during a Tuesday news conference, saying he was offended by Wright’s comments.
The candidate also took some very positive steps toward distancing himself from Wright. “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” he said, providing his own powerful sound bite.
Obama appears to be a victim of Wright’s enormous ego, which had been pretty much confined to Chicago before the reverend’s former congregant came within a few months or superdelegates of the Democratic nomination.
Before Tuesday, Obama had likened Wright to an uncle who occasionally says things you disagree with. That’s diplomatic—maybe even a bit noble. But Wright keeps taking advantage of his relationship with Obama to grab the spotlight. Since the beginning of the presidential race, Obama’s message of a national unity that transcends race and class has resonated with many voters. Wright often strikes a different chord, one that sounds increasingly angry and divisive. And sometimes, as when he talks about AIDS being a plot against blacks by the U. S. government, he sounds nutty. It’s troubling that the Obama camp was unable to convince Wright to keep a low profile through November. But now that he’s back, Obama will undoubtedly have more opportunities to convince voters that he’s made a complete break from his former pastor. Tuesday’s statement is a good start. Like it or not, Wright is a legitimate campaign issue now, and he seems hellbent on remaining one as long as he has access to a microphone. How Obama responds in the weeks ahead might determine his political future.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS OBAMA’S PATIENCE WEARS THIN Perhaps it bears repeating that Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright are different people. That might be news to critics who seek to wrap the Democratic presidential candidate in every nut-job comment steaming off his former pastor.
It shouldn’t come as news to Obama himself, and after a short but uncomfortable delay, he seized the opportunity Tuesday to make that point decisively at a news conference in Winston-Salem, N. C.
Distraction or worse, his former pastor’s re-emergence came at a critical point in the Democratic race. Jeremiah Wright may compare himself to Christ on the cross, as he did here in Dallas, but if Obama could not stand up to him, how could he stand up to Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao ?
Wright clearly wasn’t going away and no longer had Obama’s best interests at heart. In a whirlwind of appearances, including a Q&A Monday at the National Press Club, he put his eccentric, even malicious, theories back into the national political conversation and undercut those who argued that he’d been taken out of context.
Most damaging was his claim that Obama criticized his remarks from political expediency. If that were the goal, Obama could have thrown him under the bus in Philadelphia, when the candidate spoke eloquently about race and tried to put a period on this sentence.
That he didn’t do so then speaks to his loyalty and character. That he finally put some real distance between himself and his former pastor shows the courage and inner steel that led us to recommend him as the Democrats’ best candidate.
He and his supporters no longer could hope no one noticed. Obama himself said Sunday that the Wright controversy was a legitimate political issue. He cannot turn back the clock on two decades in the Trinity United Church of Christ, but he has taken the calculated risk of dealing with it.
Whether he acted in time, only time will tell. His reaction yesterday may prove to have been his Sister Souljah moment. Obama was right to say that he was outraged by his former pastor’s comments and “saddened by the spectacle.”
“The person I saw [Monday ] was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” Obama said. “What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for.” Obama has done what he could do. A respectful benefit of the doubt didn’t succeed; now, we’ll see whether a forceful denouncement will be enough.
SEATTLE TIMES REVEREND WRONG The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is on a crusade—a purposeful, self-indulgent campaign to restore dignity, if that is the right term, to his name. This man of God exudes contempt for America and cares not a whit about the damage inflicted on his most-famous parishioner, Sen. Barack Obama. The media spotlight is intoxicating, even to a preacher who supposedly lives for the betterment of the world. For the past few days, Wright has preened and primped before the cameras. He is teaching us, you see, about an angry and historical time that needs to be understood. If you don’t like what he has to say, you just don’t grasp the enormity of his experience.
What a huge disservice to Obama before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
A fiction writer could not invent a plot with a preacher who goes off on an anti-America rage and destroys a qualified, graceful candidate. Wright’s oratory becomes a vehicle for ensuring the election fixates on racial divisions.
Obama delivered a careful, historic speech on race that did not opportunistically throw the reverend aside. He was clear that he disagrees with Wright.
Close observers of Obama’s campaign and personal story know he is not an angry man.
He is blessed with an even temperament. He happens to be a person of mixed race focused not specifically on improving everyday life for blacks or whites—but for all Americans.
Along comes Wright, fiery and hellbent on imposing himself on every audience he can find. Until the Wright controversy erupted, Obama was able to transcend race. Obama is new generation; Wright is old generation.
Wright clearly does not care if he ruins Obama. He is not a man of dignity or compassion. He is a man of more egocentrism than anyone imagined.