After days of largely ignoring the media blitz his former pastor has waged, Barack Obama reversed course and denounced the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the strongest and most direct terms yet on Tuesday. It was a decision that may help him reclaim some of the initiative in a tight presidential primary contest, but it is not without risks.
The decision to specifically address Wright’s controversial statements came after the campaign maintained for days that Obama had said all he had to say on the subject - a sign that there has been growing concern that the controversy was damaging his candidacy. The result was not just a denunciation of Wright’s comments, but of the man who attracted Obama into the Trinity United Church of Christ, married him and baptized his children.
The turning point was Wright’s combative appearance in Washington yesterday at the national press club, where he stood by the comments he has claimed were taken out of context in press accounts over the past months. Wright maintained that the U.S. government was capable of acts of horror such as spreading AIDS through the black community, accused the government of committing terrorism abroad and called criticisms of such remarks an attack on the “black church.”
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In taking such an aggressive stand Obama may succeed in publicly distancing himself from the spectacle that the Rev. Wright has become, but his newfound outrage raises some further questions. In his Philadelphia address, Obama stood by his friend. “As imperfect as he may be,” he said of Wright a month ago, “he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. … I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
In today’s press conference, Obama said he sought in his earlier speech to “provide a context and to lift up some of the contradictions and complexities of race in America,” but that he found Wright’s comments Monday to be a “bunch of rants that that aren’t grounded in truth.” But many of Wright’s “rants” were simply a confirmation of many of the statements which had stirred up controversy in the first place.
Despite his appropriate outrage over Wright’s performances of late, Obama’s claim that his longtime pastor is exhibiting new behavior is certain to come under scrutiny. “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” Obama insisted today. That comment, and any suggestion that the relationship between the two men was never as close as portrayed, are questionable.
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In a New York Times profile of the Obama-Wright relationship in April 2007, Wright himself predicted such a split based on the controversial remarks that were already under some scrutiny. “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Wright told the paper over a year ago. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”
Whether Obama’s strong words of denunciation today were sincere or “political posturing” will be decided by the remaining Democratic primary voters, the party’s superdelegates and, perhaps, the national electorate. But it’s not a discussion that is likely to disappear entirely from the public’s consciousness.
MUCH MORE:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/29/politics/main4056166.shtml
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