By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008; 8:49 AM

It's been a whole week since I heard anyone suggest that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race. I'm just sayin'.

I don't know whether Barack Obama has put the Wright mess behind him--probably not, given his sudden interest in going on "Today" and "Meet the Press"--but questions about his handling of the debacle are going to reverberate for a long time. And the echoes will grow louder if he loses Indiana and even North Carolina next week.

It's hard to understand not just why Obama waited as long as he did to repudiate the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but why he didn't see this train wreck coming down the track. Fifteen months ago, he knew his pastor was enough of a liability to disinvite him from the presidential announcement speech. Why, then, did Obama seemingly have no plan to deal with the matter once those videotaped sermons surfaced?

Perhaps the best thing the senator did on Tuesday was to seem a little angry. Anger, real or manufactured, is a great tool in politics, and Obama was starting to draw criticism for seeming too cool. When he didn't stand up to the reverend on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, critics said he looked weak. Voters make judgments based on how candidates handle campaign crises. If Jeremiah was running around the country taunting Barack, who barely bothered to respond, was this a man who could stand up to the leaders of Iran and North Korea?

With Meredith Vieira this morning, Obama brushed off a question about why he didn't act sooner, saying that would have been the "politically expedient" thing to do. (The idea that he only had "snippets" to go on earlier is a tough sell, given Wright's history.) Michelle Obama's role was to say "voters are tired" of this flap. But a voter asked Barack about it yesterday.

Maybe this will all have blown over in a couple of weeks. Perhaps most voters will conclude it's not fair to blame Obama for the ranting of his ex-pastor. But it may well undermine him with voters who are uneasy with the political newcomer this fall, if he makes it that far.

This is one instance in which the polls tell the story:

"Senator Barack Obama's aura of inevitability in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has diminished in the wake of his loss in the Pennsylvania primary and the furor over his former pastor, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

"The survey found that Mr. Obama, whose lead in the race for the delegates needed to secure the nomination has given him a commanding position over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton since February, is now perceived to be in a much tighter fight. Fifty-one percent of Democratic voters say they expect Mr. Obama to win their party's nomination, down from 69 percent a month ago. Forty-eight percent of Democrats say Mr. Obama is the candidate with the best chance of beating Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, down from 56 percent a month ago.

"Mr. Obama still holds an edge over Mrs. Clinton on several key measures; for example, 46 percent of the Democratic primary voters say he remains their choice for the nomination, while 38 percent preferred Mrs. Clinton, who has lost support among men in recent weeks."

There's a Fox survey as well:

"On the surface, a majority of Americans (52 percent) says they care very little or not at all about the relationship between Obama and Wright, and four in 10 say that relationship would have no impact on their vote; however, a look below the surface shows how much this issue is influencing the presidential race.

"Those disinclined to vote for the Illinois senator based on his ties to Wright (44 percent) outweigh those who would be inclined to vote for him (12 percent) by a wide margin. While the margin is somewhat closer among Democrats (36 percent disinclined; 16 inclined), the toll on Obama is still quite severe."

And: "Only 27% of voters have positive views of Republicans, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the lowest level for either party in the survey's nearly two-decade history.

"Yet the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, continues to run nearly even with Democratic rivals Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. His showing clouds the outcome of a race that was expected to be tough for Republicans, who face an electorate that overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction under President Bush."

"By questioning Obama's honesty," says National Review's Byron York, "Wright was striking at the heart of the Obama campaign. The most damaging thing Wright could ever say is that he knows, based on his long personal relationship with Obama, that Obama agrees with him but can't say so publicly for political reasons. Put another way, if voters believe that Obama fundamentally rejects Wright's views, they might question Obama's judgment in remaining close to Wright for 20 years. But if voters believe that Obama secretly agrees with Wright but is putting on another face to win an election, then all is lost . . .

"The threat from Wright remains, all the way until November 4. Wright knows the true nature of his relationship with Obama. He knows what they have said to each other. He knows whether Obama finds Wright's views as offensive as he has said. There are more than six months left before the general election, and if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, that is a lot of time for the voluble -- and publicity-loving -- pastor to remain silent."

I disagree with the first part--everyone knows Obama is a politician. But Wright could inflict more damage if he starts popping off in the fall.

To Dick Polman, Obama's move was a matter of political necessity:

"He had no choice. Jeremiah Wright had turned into a one-man wrecking crew, and it was starting to look like Obama was just a passive bystander, a hapless witness to his own destruction, lacking the requisite guts to take the guy down. Most importantly, that kind of passivity is hardly the kind of character trait that many Americans want to see in a commander-in-chief. A real leader has to show that he can confront and isolate his adversaries. And Wright had indeed become an adversary."

Polman quotes a Democratic strategist as worrying "that in the eyes of swing voters (including the racially enlightened), Obama was starting to look weak; that many voters were perhaps starting to ask themselves whether this new phenom on the political scene was really tough enough to take on the likes of Ahmadinejad when he seemed so reluctant to handle Wright with the ruthlessness that is sometimes required of a chief executive."

Why did the two men hook up in the first place? The New Republic's Noam Scheiber floats two theories:

"The first is cynical: Obama was a black politician in Chicago with an exotic background and intimidating credentials. He needed a home in a black church to gain credibility with his less educated, less affluent, more parochial-minded constituents. Trinity offered him the requisite cred.

"The second, not entirely unrelated, theory is psychoanalytical: Obama, as the product of a racially-mixed marriage, in which the black father was almost entirely absent, had spent his whole life groping for an authentic identity. Wright offered Obama both the father and the identity he never had."

Hot Air man Ed Morrissey skewers the media coverage, including a New York Times editorial:

"Both Obama and the NYT want this to look like it became an issue only because Wright spoke this week and rehashed what he's been saying from the Trinity pulpit for years. Why? If they can set the bar that low, it gets both Obama and the NYT editors off the hook for not acknowledging what the rest of the nation had figured out from Wright's long history of demagoguery."

Still, the first words of the Times editorial are "It took more time than it should have."

Morrissey also goes after a Washington Post editorial, which he says "pretends that Jeremiah Wright suddenly popped out of the ground this week, offering lunatic conspiracy theories and insane racial genetics with no track record of it at all in the past. Unlike the Gray Lady, the WaPo editorial at least acknowledges that Barack Obama's long ties to Wright calls into question the judgment he claims as superior to that of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. It then repeats Obama's assertion that his entire career goes against everything Wright said without -- like Obama -- offering any evidence to support it . . .

"If the episode 'raises legitimate questions' about Obama's judgment, why would it be out of bounds for political ads?"

That's a little selective; what the Post editorial opposed was "political ads built on racial fears." Anyone in favor of that?

Americablog's John Aravosis is sympathetic:

"I appreciate the position Obama is in. It's difficult to see someone you once respected turn into a crazy man."

At Open Left, Chris Bowers sees a "strategic shift" by the Obama camp. "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."

At Right Wing News, John Hawkins sees two possible conclusions:

"#1) Obama is so dim-witted and such a terrible judge of character that he actually meant what he said and just didn't understand how bad Wright was. If that's true, then he really just doesn't have the people skills to be the President of the United States.

"#2) Obama has known what Wright was all about for the last 20 years, at worst agreed with it and at best wasn't bothered by it, and simply lied because he knew the American people wouldn't support an unpatriotic, racialist candidate who despises white people."

With Wright getting roughed up by the left and right, the Nation's John Nichols offers a more sympathetic view:

"This former Marine who became an remarkably-successful and widely-respected religious leader is in possession of the balm that has frequently proven to be the cure for what ails America -- an eyes-wide-open faith in the prospect that this country can and will put aside the sins of the past and forge a future that is as just as it is righteous . . .

"Not all of what Wright says is comforting. His views are not universally appealing, nor are they or should they be seen as unassailable. But, for the most part, they are well much within the mainstream of American religious and political discourse.

"The problem is not Jeremiah Wright. The problem is a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune -- and a media that willingly invites manipulation."

Seems to me Wright did a pretty good job of assassinating his own reputation.

Michelle Malkin pulls no punches in pummeling Obama's belated realization about the reverend:

"What a load of pure unadulterated horse manure. Anyone with eyes can see that Wright's performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His anti-white, anti-American, 'imperialist'-bashing shtick was not developed overnight or over the past few years. He's been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He's been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He's been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He's been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.

"Obama's best-selling Audacity of Hope is named after the first sermon of Wright's that he heard -- decades ago -- in which the pastor of racial resentment inveighed against an environment 'where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere.' Yet, only now has Obama concluded that Wright's sermons are 'a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth.'

"Welcome to the Jive-Talk Express."

To HuffPoster Bob Cesca, though, the media are going wild over a "nothing story":

"If the corporate media had been as diligent about watchdogging President Bush as they have been about watchdogging Reverend Wright, it's very likely we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

"If the corporate media had spent as much time exposing the obvious flaws and grotesque inequalities of Reaganomics throughout the last 30 years as they've spent on Wright, we wouldn't necessarily be staring into the maw of another depression."

Cesca goes so far as to say that "scary shouting black men equal ratings-sweet-ratings." But wasn't it Obama who invited reporters to his news conference and agreed to chat up Meredith Vieira and Tim Russert?

If you caught Hillary making her O'Reilly debut last night, I thought she hit it out of the park. Bill O'Reilly was hard on her--saying she's a socialist and her health plan would bankrupt the country--and she gave it right back to him in a friendly joust. She also, when prodded, took some shots at Wright.

"As Barack Obama sought to dampen the renewed controversy over his former pastor by announcing three superdelegate endorsements Wednesday, Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton kept the issue alive, calling remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. 'offensive and outrageous,' " says the L.A. Times.

As for the Republicans, they are sooo over her:

"Hillary Clinton's decisive Pennsylvania primary win last week may have reinvigorated her campaign, but you wouldn't know it from listening to the Republican Party," Politico reports. "The National Republican Congressional Committee has purchased $500,000 in anti-Barack Obama ads for use in two upcoming special House elections. The Republican National Committee is flooding reporters with anti-Obama emails. Presumptive nominee John McCain and GOP surrogates have seized on new remarks by Obama's controversial former pastor. From top to bottom, from McCain down to the youthful campaign and party staffers who work nearly around the clock to get him elected, the working assumption seems to be that the Democratic contest is over and Obama has won."

In the WSJ, Karl Rove has some advice for the Republican nominee:

"When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal . . .

"Private people like Mr. McCain are rare in politics for a reason. Candidates who are uncomfortable sharing their interior lives limit their appeal. But if Mr. McCain is to win the election this fall, he has to open up."

Meanwhile, I agree with Arianna: the media ignoring the NYT story on the Pentagon program to spin military analysts has been "shameful."