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Thursday, March 27, 2008
Thinking Wright
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No surprise here, but the commentary on America offered by Barack Obama’s minister of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., continues to bedevil Obama’s candidacy.
Campaigning in Greensboro, N.C., Wednesday, Obama returned to the Wright debacle to insist that people are paying too much attention to a few “stupid” comments. “This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down…into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country.”
Hillary Clinton knows what the rest of us do. Wright’s dissing of his country in the pulpit offended the values of a majority of Americans — and it’s not going away. She stated Tuesday what should be obvious to the rest of us. “I think that given all we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor,” she said, weighing in directly for the first time. She puts her finger on the point that it’s hard to get past: Sure, we’ve all been in the presence of people who say nutty things, including some who aren’t relatives. But 20 years?
Wright is doing his part, such as he can, to help the controversy die down, for the time being at least. He’s canceling plans to preach at a number of churches and to make other public appearances.
Democrats, recognizing the potential fallout (loss of the White House) are desperate to get the Obama-Hillary competition over quickly. Some 28 percent of Clinton supporters say they would vote for John McCain if Obama is the nominee, while 19 percent of Obama supporters say they would choose McCain if she is the nominee, according to analysis of Gallup tracking polls.
The pressure’s being put on Hillary to drop out, possibly in return for a promise to be chosen as Senate Majority Leader next year. Some Democrats are also suggesting that the superdelegates get together after the last primary in June to anoint a nominee prior to the convention in August.
Hillary should not give in to the pressure — and not because the on-going dispute works to McCain’s favor. One of the two nominees, either the Democrat or the Republican, will be President next year. McCain is my first choice but Hillary would be my second, admittedly with a huge gap between choice one and two.
Her domestic policies will drive me nuts, but I’m far from ready to turn national security over to a an inexperienced senator who, given absolute free choice, picked Jeremiah Wright.
