Obama's Racial Plea

"A frank reflection on the problems of race in America that rejected the minister's words but also drew a broader personal and historical context in which to read them," says the Boston Globe.

The Chicago Tribune's take: "Sen. Barack Obama's sweeping speech on race Tuesday marked an attempt to wrench his campaign out of a polarizing diversion and to reignite a discussion of the country's potential for moving beyond racial division, a theme that worked well for Obama early in the campaign but seemed to get lost amid recent events."

Slate's John Dickerson says the speech wasn't all that courageous:

"Obama didn't answer Wright's rebuke with an equally hot riposte. The speech failed to address head-on Wright's damning of America or any of his other remarks about 9/11 or AIDS. Obama asked for points for political courage for not abandoning Wright, and he should get them. Abandonment would have been more expedient. White blue-collar men in Pennsylvania would have applauded shoving Wright over, and his rock-solid black supporters probably would have understood. But Obama's courage didn't extend to directly taking on the words that have caused such controversy."

Politico's Roger Simon offers a mixed review:

"Where it was strongest was in appealing to the better angels of the American spirit: the notion that we can all come together. Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable. Wright, who has been Obama's pastor for 20 years, has said America had brought on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - 'America's chickens are coming home to roost' - and that 'We started the AIDS virus.' Without citing such statements specifically, Obama sought to explain them, though he first condemned them."

At the New Republic, Michael Crowley applauds but questions whether others will:

"Barack Obama gave a brilliant, inspiring, intellectually supple speech--but one that may have done little to solve his festering problem with working class white Americans . . .

"Many headlines are already focusing on his condemnation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric. But Obama also refused to rhetorically dump Wright. Instead he argued that 'I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.' This is a complex and nuanced point--one which, taken from the context of Obama's larger assessment of race in America, won't satisfy people horrified by a preacher who blamed 9/11 on U.S. policies . . .

"The second way in which Obama's speech may have come up short was the scant attention it devoted to social failures within the black community."

I was expecting a passage along those lines, because Obama has made those criticisms before.

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff says the senator is letting himself off the hook: