Where Obama's Big Speech on Race Fell Short

Michael Gerson, writing at RealClearPolitics, offers an excellent discussion of where Barack Obama's speech on race fell short.  Do read it all, but here's a tidbit:

It was one of the finest political performances under pressure since John F. Kennedy at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. It also fell short in significant ways.

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of the African-American community. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans who wonder how any presidential candidate could be so closely associated with an adviser who refers to the "U.S. of KKK-A" and urges God to "damn" our country.

Obama's excellent and important speech on race in America did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront in Philadelphia. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes his charge is correct, he should urge the overthrow of the American government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.

But Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America. And his pastoral teaching may put lives at risk, because the HIV virus spreads more readily in an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories.

The Philadelphia speech implied that these toxic views are somehow parallel to the stereotyping of black men by Obama's grandmother, which Obama said made him "cringe" -- both are the foibles of family. But while Grandma may have had some issues to work through, Wright is accusing the American government of trying to kill every member of a race. There is a difference.

Comments

[Mary]

For practical purposes, the First Amendment seems dead to me. I laud Obama for carefully trying to give it a bit of a comeback.

Wright's bit about AIDS is probably silly (tough to prove a negative), but unhappiness in inner cities about drugs and where they come from is a really tough issue here that Obama was probably wise to leave alone. Poking into that one is physically dangerous.

People on the extremes will speak truth to power. A complete dollar meltdown may be the only other thing they can hear in these times.
The horrors of the U.S. funding and arming both sides in world conflicts is another issue hiding under this attempt to pull a guilt-by-association slam on a very articulate person.

Hillary and McCain had better watch it on the guilt-by-association track. They have Achilles heels in that game.

Anybody remember the S&L crisis? What's going on with the dollar could make that difficult for McCain.

Remember how Hillary made a killing in the commodities market? Don't you wonder who lost when Hillary won?

Maybe these guys can keep this stuff under wraps, but this history speaks volumes as to who pays when important people profit.

[poetryman69]

Getting yourself pastored for 20 years by a radical hater shows bad judgment. Lying about it when asked by the media shows dishonesty. Now we know the real reason why you refused to wear a flag lapel pin and why your wife has never before been proud of America. If we take you at your word, you spent 20 years in the company of a man, and never once figured out that he was a virulent racist. A president of the United states cannot afford to be that obtuse. Request for presidency denied.

--klqtzz