It was largely unexpected, but questions about Barack Obama’s church pastor had, oddly enough, suddenly become the one political controversy that stood to do the most damage to his campaign. The Rezko story seems pretty thin, NAFTA-gate turned out to be much less than met the eye, the “madrassa” story was complete nonsense, and the “plagiarism” flap was just silly.
But questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright actually mattered, and over the last day or two, began to dominate. Portions of his more inflammatory sermons were hard to dismiss, there was video that dominated the cable networks, and reasonable people wanted to hear more from Obama directly about his thoughts on Wright’s, shall we say, “provocative” ideas. Obama had denounced a variety of Wright’s comments, but it wasn’t quite enough.
Hoping to tackle the burgeoning controversy before it grew too intense, Obama addressed the matter in a 600-word piece for the Huffington Post.
The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
The entire piece is worth reading, just to appreciate the full context, but Obama explained how he came to join Trinity United Church of Christ nearly 20 years ago, that he was not in the pews for the controversial sermons and did not learn of them until fairly recently, and why he did not leave his church after learning of the retiring pastor’s inflammatory comments.
Obama concluded, “[W]hile Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.”
And if that weren’t enough, Obama proceeded to go even further after the HuffPost item was published.
He appeared on MSNBC last night to denounce Wright’s remarks even more forcefully, and did a nice job of trying to fit the controversy into his broader message of generational change.
“[O]ne thing that I do hope to do is to use some of these issues to talk more fully about the question of race in our society, because part of what we`re seeing here is Reverend Wright represents a generation that came of age in the 60s.
“He`s an African-American man, who, you know, because of his life experience continues to have a lot of anger and frustration, and will express that in ways that are very different from me and my generation, partly because I benefited from the struggles of that early generation. And so, part of what we`re seeing here is a transition from the past to the future. And I hope that our politics represents the future.”
Around the same time, campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor notified reporters that Wright will no longer serve in his largely ceremonial role on Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee.
I’m cognizant of the opportunity for hypocrisy. To be intellectually honest, I’ve been thinking about how I’d react if Obama were a Republican with a far-right pastor with a record of inflammatory rhetoric. Under the circumstances, I’d expect (and probably write a great deal about) the need for the candidate to repudiate the comments, disassociate himself with the pastor, and explain the association in some detail. As far as I can tell, Obama has done all three.
In this sense, I don’t think it’s hypocritical at all to criticize John McCain for his embrace of right-wing religious extremists (Falwell, Hagee, and Parsley, among others), while defending Obama from conservative attacks about Wright. The different is in the response — McCain went out of his way to reach out to radical religious figures, rationalize their hate-filled rhetoric, and use his associations for political gain. All available evidence suggests Obama has done the polar opposite.
Ultimately, as offensive as Wright’s remarks have been, I just don’t see where else the story can go. Obama is a member of a Christian church, his Christian pastor has said some ridiculous things, and Obama has denounced them. If we’re going to start holding candidates responsible for every utterance from their congregation, the burdens on politicians will quickly become ridiculous.
On a related note, Yglesias added:
I’ve been slow on the uptake with the Jeremiah Wright issue because I don’t just have a quippy joke to make about this. I’m unsure, in general, of what the standards we’re supposed to apply to the political views of politicians’ favored clergy. I have no idea what the rabbis at Temple Rodef Shalom (where I’ve gone to synagogue the past few High Holy Days) or at The Village Temple (where I had my bar mitzvah) think about political issues, but I assume I don’t agree with them about everything, and certainly it’d be odd to drag up old statements made by any of the relevant rabbis about this or that and then ask me to either endorse the statement or repudiate the entire congregation.
By the same token, we don’t assume that a politician who goes to mass wants to ban birth control nor do we ask Catholics who favored preventive war with Iraq to repudiate the Pope in order to prove their hawk bona fides. In short, we generally assume that a politician’s stated political views express his or her position on political topics, and that affiliating with a religious congregation does not constitute an endorsement of everything the leaders of that congregation have ever said.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I see this as a basically trumped-up issue.
If Obama had kept quiet, and said nothing about Wright, it would have been a mistake. The questions have been fair and legitimate. But Obama appears to have answered them. I don’t doubt the far-right will make every effort to milk this for all it’s worth, for as long as possible, but the suggestions that Wright’s comments should bring Obama’s patriotism into doubt are cheap and misguided — and the right knows it.