From the Politico:
"I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That's who I am, that's what I believe, and that's what this campaign has been about," Obama said.
"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," he said.(...)
"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."
"They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.
"If Reverend Wright thinks that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church," he said. "But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism - then there are no exuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."
"It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I'm about. It is not what I think America stands for," he said.
It is a jarring juxtaposition to hear a candidate denounce his own pastor while simultaneously talking about the need for mutual understanding and to bridge the divides between people. Denunciatiing while promising unifying feels like a logical contradiction, or at least a rhetorical one.
This also seems to represent a broader strategic shift in the Obama campaign. First by ending a longstanding boycott of Fox News, and now by denouncing Jeremiah Wright after eloquently defending him just six weeks ago in a speech that was read around the world. The campaign now appears to be caving to right-wing attacks it once parried and refused to back down against. Really, it is kind of sad, since Obama's previous willingness to not throw his allies under the bus in public and to not appear on right-wing propaganda outlets was, in my opinion, a much better example of bringing people together than the new tactics we are witnessing. Right-wing attacks against Jeremiah Wright are actually far more importnat in dividing the country than the likes of Jeremiah Wright himself.
Update: For the sake of clarity, no, I did not see what Wright said yesterday. Why should I have? I find the focus on that sort of thing idiotic. I know it is the stuff the press covers all the time, which sort of makes it important, but it is still idiotic. Worse still, those are the sorts of stories that are actually and regularly used to enflame identity and cultural divisions in America.
Maybe Wright had it coming to him--I honestly don't know. What I do know is that these sorts of divisive attacks against people associated with candidates are a longstanding media tactic. I am more interested in seeing someone push back against those attacks, which Obama had been doing, than in accepting their basic premise, no matter how legitimate the attack might appear in any given circumstance. Arguing over the credibility of any individual attack feels like missing the forest for an individual tree. While campaigns are pretty much forced to always deal with the individual, short-term attacks, none of this will change until someone takes on the larger problem.
Update 2: Since my take on this story is abstract and not wedded to the specifics of Wright's comments over the past couple of days, check out Bob Herbert if you want a good, specific , pro-Obama smackdown on Wright. |
