Soccer Dad

Coming apart at the seams

It may be as Senator Obama claims, that Rev. Wright is not the same man he met 20 years ago, however it also seems that Sen. Obama had some sense that much of America was not ready for Rev. Wrights views as the NYT reports (via memeorandum):

In this learned and radical pastor, Mr. Obama found a guide who could explain Jesus and faith in terms intellectual no less than emotional, and who helped a man of mixed racial parentage come to understand himself as an African-American. “Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black,” Mr. Obama wrote in his autobiography “Dreams From My Father.”

At the same time, as Mr. Obama’s friends and aides now acknowledge, he was aware that, shorn of their South Side Chicago context, the words and cadences of a politically left-wing black minister could have a very problematic echo. So Mr. Obama haltingly distanced himself from his pastor.

Mr. Obama announced in early 2007 that he would be running for president. He invited Mr. Wright to deliver the invocation at the event in Springfield, but the evening before the event, Mr. Wright answered his cellphone and heard an apologetic soon-to-be candidate. Rolling Stone had just published a profile of Mr. Obama that included some colorful snippets from the pastor’s sermons.

(It should be noted that the Rolling Stone article was laudatory of Sen. Obama for embracing a "radical" ideology.)

Still the Times says that the views of Rev. Wright may not be understood out of context. I hardly think that there's a context where Rev. Wright's views would not be troubling.

But it's clear that Sen. Obama realized that Rev. Wright's views would be troubling to many people and in the name of his political career he abided them.

Not all of this surprised Mr. Obama. Trinity was a progressive church, welcoming to gay men and lesbians, embracing of AIDS sufferers at a time when many other black churches shunned them. But the message heard from the pulpit was sometimes unyielding in its radicalism. To be provoked, if not always to agree, was the point. As he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.”

“In his sermons, Mr. Wright spoke of Sharpeville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and the statehouse,” Mr. Obama wrote.

Mr. Obama faced practical political considerations as well. He had made Mr. Wright a central figure in his personal narrative. His embrace of Mr. Wright’s church and its congregants, wealthy and working class and impoverished, formed the climax of his book. It was the moment, in his telling, when Mr. Obama finally pulled every disparate strand of his background together and found his faith.

It sounds like the Senator wanted things both ways. He wanted to say that Rev. Wright "provoked" him without agreeing. But the article also claims:

His grounding in Trinity Church would also bequeath to him a measure of authenticity with the black community.

Then Sen. Obama needed Rev. Wright and Trinity, but he needed them at a distance. If this article is an accurate portrayal of the relationship between Sen. Obama and Rev. Wright, it shows a cynicism on the part of the candidate. He wasn't some naif surprised by the extreme views of his pastor; he was, first and foremost, a politician eager to appeal to as many disparate groups as he could. When the contradiction between the views of Rev. Wright and his political appeal became unbridgeable, Sen. Obama jettisoned Rev. Wright.

Is citing Sen. Obama's support of a candidate an "attack ad?"

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