Obama's Racial Plea

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 8:43 AM

Barack Obama didn't take the easy route.

The safe course would have been to just denounce the ugly comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and move on to a generalized appeal for racial unity. But he didn't do that.

He said he could no more disown his pastor than he could his white grandmother. He talked about how Wright came from a generation of African Americans that was understandably angry about racism and segregation in this country. Then he pivoted and talked about white anger, about resentment toward affirmative action. He also took a couple of swipes at the media before reaffirming his belief that America can still make racial progress.

In quiet tones--dispensing with the full-throated oratory so familiar at his rallies--Obama challenged the country to a more elevated debate about race.

And there was a not-so-subtle challenge to the news business:

"Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism . . .

"We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words." Or, he said, we can talk about what really matters.

Most people, of course, aren't sitting around watching speeches on morning cable. They will form impressions of the speech from the TV coverage and the newspaper headlines. In short, a long, discursive rumination about race will be sliced and diced by our sound-bite culture.

I don't know whether this defuses the Wright problem or not. Obama seemed absolutely determined not to disavow him, and that won't help him politically, no matter what the chattering classes say.

"The speech violated several conventions of campaign discourse -- for one, the injunction that all politicians must speak about racial and ethnic groups in upbeat stereotypes," says the New York Times.

"Presidential politics usually requires candidates to either wholly adopt or reject positions and people. Mr. Obama did neither with his pastor, rejecting his most divisive statements but also filling in the picture of Mr. Wright and his church . . . He admitted that his pastor is both a divisive figure and an inspiring one."

"Obama in effect offered his candidacy as the next chapter in a story of racial tension and reconciliation that has unfolded since the country's founding," says the L.A. Times.

"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:

"There is a key difference between Obama's grandmother and Rev. Wright. Not only is his connection with Wright voluntary, but Obama selected Wright to be his spiritual leader. If he still says Wright is 'part of me' (and he can longer claim that he doesn't know the full scope of Wright's hatred of 'white America'), then he should be judged for containing that 'part.'

"It will not do to say that Wright is 'part of America.' Lots of deplorable people are part of America, including white racists. Political candidates are not required to embody every strand of America, much less the most noxious hate-filled ones. Political candidates embrace the strands that speak to them, and we should embrace the political candidates whose strands of thinking speak to us."

At the Nation, John Nichols faults the media for a simplistic debate:

"Obama did not do the politically 'smart' thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm . . .

"At the most basic level, Obama did what the media has failed to do. He presented Wright and Wright's comments on U.S. domestic and foreign policies in context: the context of the African-American religious experience, the context of the candidate's connection to the church and, above all, the context of this country's unresolved experience of what Obama correctly refers to as 'the original sin' of the American experiment -- human bondage -- and its legacy. The speech was masterful in this regard."

Many at National Review turn thumbs down, but Charles Murray, whose past writings on race have been controversial, says:

"Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant--rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."

HuffPost contributor Jon Robin Baitz is thrilled by the address:

"We saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of 'what is is'), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor."

When someone invokes Shakespeare, it's a pretty clear sign of approval.

Obama talked about whites as well as blacks, as Time's Ana Marie Cox notes:

"He said some things that echo arguments liberals (not just black politicians) have made in the past: Wright's comments are rooted in a history of real racism. But he also did something that seems completely unique to him, both as a liberal and a black politician: He acknowledged -- maybe even acknowledged as legitimate -- the anger that working-class whites feel about busing, affirmative action, and other sources of racial friction, as a parallel to the anger of Wright's congregation. A powerful moment, and it suggests that there is substance to his vision of bridging racial divides."

Writing before the speech, Andrew Sullivan takes Obama's stance personally:

"I have to say that it is precisely the wide span of Obama's bridge that makes me admire him. He has refused to disown Wright, while also refusing to endorse all of his message. You can call that opportunistic or expedient or cynical. You can also call it intelligent and brave and principled. Obama could have chosen the Shelby Steele route or even the Alan Keyes or Condi Rice path. He could equally have chosen the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton path. But what is unique about Obama is that he tried and is trying to do much more than any of them have -- to express all of these racial strategies and to transcend them. While being human. He isn't a saint or a savior. But he is trying . . .

"And maybe it's appropriate for me at this point to express how he has inspired me as a gay man to keep trying to maintain the bridge over the gulfs of my own various identities rather than to burn it."

The conservative black author Shelby Steele, in a pre-speech post, says Obama "has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence . . .

"Race helps Mr. Obama in another way -- it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America's tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America's redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? . . .

"The press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

"And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance."

To suggest that a man who has inspired millions is just trying to exploit white guilt strikes me as insulting. But everyone's got a viewpoint.

John McCain has a 67 approval rating, according to Gallup, compared to 62 percent for Obama and 53 percent for Hillary Clinton. Of course, McCain hasn't been attacked much lately, and even when he has, it's been totally overshadowed by the Democratic race.

Eliot Spitzer was in office 15 months before his hooker habit came to light. For David Paterson it was . . . one day until we heard about an extramarital affair, carried out at the less-than-glamorous Days Inn. Now the plot is getting more complicated:

"In an extraordinary public confession less than 24 hours after taking office," says the Daily News, "Gov. Paterson said Tuesday he has had affairs with 'a number of women' in the not-so-distant past - including a current state employee.

"Standing shoulder to shoulder with his grim-faced wife, Michelle, the governor said his 'conscience is clear' -- now that he has come clean about his private infidelities . . .

"Sources later identified her as Lila Kirton, 49, whom Spitzer brought over from his attorney general's staff when he became governor last year. She is now community affairs director for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

"Paterson insisted he never supervised the woman and never used state funds for any of his trysts, some of which took place at the Days Inn at Broadway and W. 94th St."

Paterson "conceded that at least one dalliance continued into his term as lieutenant governor, which began only 14 months ago."

"At first, he suggested, his wandering ways were motivated by jealousy after learning of his wife's affair. 'When I became aware of something, I was pretty upset and I was kind of just angry,' he said before quickly moving to absolve his wife of any real blame. 'I was jealous over Michelle,' he added. 'But it was not Michelle's fault.' "

How does anyone in Albany have time to govern?

And don't forget Ashley! The New York Post has new details on Spitzer's favorite hooker:

" 'Girls Gone Wild' honcho Joe Francis yesterday offered $1 million for Ashley Alexandra Dupre to appear nude in a video and magazine spread -- but then quickly rescinded the deal after realizing he already had steamy footage of the hot-to-trot call girl in action when she was 18.

" 'She spent a week on the bus, where she engaged in girl-girl action and got nude,' Francis told the Post."

And Francis, who is fresh out of prison, couldn't resist this chivalrous shot:

"I personally remember Ashley. She was really at her peak back then. I'm glad I got to her before Spitzer -- she looked a lot better at 18."

Anyone else feel like taking a shower?