"Outraged" Obama

He gives a press conference, denouncing in few uncertain terms the Reverend Wright.
It's probably a denunciation he should have made weeks ago.
I disagree with those who would imply that the Wright issue should somehow be off-limits for conservatives and Republicans...
At the same time I'd remind conservatives: it is Obama who is the candidate for president, not his pastor.

Obama's bargain

Did you catch this? A few weeks ago, Shelby Steele made a good point concerning Barack Obama's appeal to whites:

"How to turn one's blackness to advantage? The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence."

Yes. And, I would add, perhaps Obama offered, to middle-of-the-road Americans, what they perceived as a chance to atone for what they saw as any past racism of their own.

Steele then goes on to point out that this is why the Jeremiah Wright story presented Obama with such danger--it imperiled his "bargain" with whites; he no longer looked like the one able to present whites with innocence.

But, again I must tell conservatives: Obama's a tough cookie. He appears to have weathered the Wright storm. I don't think the right will get far beating that dead horse. If some Americans are determined to use Obama to atone for their perceived racist pasts, it will be tough to stop them. Now what we CAN do is point out this fundamental: the presidency in this day and age is a pretty important job, facing important issues. Your vote for it shouldn't be used to exorcise past demons. You want redemption for the racial slurs you said when you were younger? Then go out and do things in your community, go out and demonstrate judging people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, in your daily life. But meanwhile, when it comes to voting for president, vote on the issues and on the candidates. Nothing more, nothing less.

More on Obama/Wright

So some of my e-mailers have questioned my view of Barack Obama and his troublesome pastor, Jeremiah Wright. They think the issue is more important than I have suggested it is (and other bloggers agree with them).

They make some good points. So does Michael Gerson here, when he wrote recently:

"Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought."

I like this line of argument because it frames the Wright issue more in terms of principle. That's where we need to be. I didn't mean to imply that the question of Jeremiah Wright was meaningless. It isn't. It raises questions. But I don't think it can be a main line of conservative criticism, nor the only one. But I like the way Gerson frames the issue, and the questions it raises. Read the whole thing.

Some hope regarding Obama

So recently I've been critical both of Barack Obama, and of some of the conservatives who have been criticizing him. But there's hope on both counts. Peggy Noonan, for example, one of my favorite conservatives as well as one of my favorite writers, recently noted this concerning Obama's recent speech on race:

"Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too. This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit."

Exactly. Acknowledging some of the concerns many whites have on some racial issues--how many Democrat politicians have done that recently? Would Jesse Jackson have done it? Of course not. So does Obama really sound like a radical to you? And remember, this isn't the first time Obama has shown that he recognizes the same concerns conservatives have. Obama has frequently discussed how many African-Americans have lagged behind in educational achievement. And he's pointed out that some of that is due to failings in the African-American community itself--that there are too few involved African-American fathers; that more in the community need to turn off the TV and read to their kids.

Painting Obama as Jeremiah Wright redux, then, just doesn't make sense.
I'm glad Noonan recognizes that. More of us on the right need to recognize it (and, therefore, to criticize Obama where he deserves to be criticized).

Obama and the polls

Some of my conservative friends, I've noted, have tried to buttress their arguments concerning the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright affair by claiming that the public agrees with them that this is a big deal, that Obama is crashing in the polls.


But I don't see it.
See, for example, RealClearPolitics' roundup of the latest Election '08 polls for Tuesday, March 25th.
For the Pennsylvania primary, Rasmussen shows Senator Clinton with a 10 point lead over Obama. That sounds significant, except for the fact that polls a week or two ago showed her with over a 20 point lead there. Once again, Obama is closing the gap (as he's done in pretty much every state since January). Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Obama lead has not shrunk--it's lengthened. He's up by 21 points. The Tar Heel state holds firm for him. In national polls tracking Democrats' preference for the nomination, Gallup shows Obama still in the lead over Clinton; Rasmussen shows Clinton still with a slight lead. That hardly suggests that, among Democrats at least, Obama has hit the skids. Meanwhile, it's too early to tell what a potential McCain/Obama matchup might look like.

Obama still appears to me to be the likely Democratic Party nominee for president.
Republicans can't, meanwhile, count on the Wright issue to be a hot topic forever, or (therefore) for it to be some kind of magic bullet to use against Obama in the fall. There's going to have to be a better campaign waged, one against the principles and ideas held by Barack Obama, not those held by Jeremiah Wright.

Obama and his pastor

So Republicans are excited over the chance to attack Barack Obama over his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his anti-American sermons.

You know, in my view, conservatives and Republicans make a mistake in making a huge, huge deal about Obama's pastor.

Yes, Wright is a radical, anti-American fool.
But the fact is, Wright said "God damn America" and all the other stuff.
Obama didn't say that stuff and I don't think he buys into any of it.
There are plenty of things on which to make principled, issue-based critiques, and serious ones, vs Obama. He's wrong on Iraq and on terrorism in general. When it comes to domestic policy, were he to actually try to implement all of his spending and programmatic promises made so far in the campaign, he'd have to increase government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. And he's foolish to suggest that he'd meet with dictators like Chavez or Ahmadinejad with basically no preconditions.

Let's attack on him on those issue-oriented, principled grounds; not on the basis of what somebody else who, let's face it, doesn't have a huge role in Obama's campaign. Obama showed poor judgment, I suppose, in not distancing himself from Wright decisively far before this, but I hardly think this is the biggest issue facing us. A far bigger issue is what Obama would do in regard to America's enemies overseas. We should focus on that.