1 Boring Old Man

The Pastor Casts a Shadow

Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big-time news media — this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it. It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.

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My guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to his former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour. For Senator Obama, the re-emergence of Rev. Wright has been devastating. The senator has been trying desperately to bolster his standing with skeptical and even hostile white working-class voters. When the story line of the campaign shifts almost entirely to the race-in-your-face antics of someone like Mr. Wright, Mr. Obama’s chances can only suffer.

Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf. Hillary Clinton is taunting Mr. Obama about his unwillingness to participate in another debate. Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race.

Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Rev. Wright is absolutely the wrong medicine for those concerns.

That "No" had been sitting there waiting to be said for a very long time. So, when people talk about "the Black Church" and its importance, they’re talking about the repository of a collective "No" waiting to be said. That’s what I personally heard when I listened to Reverend Wright – that really loud "No" that turned out to be such a powerful force in the days when I was coming into being. I’ve always said that "No" is one of the most powerful things that you can ever say – and that there are two historical figures that stand before us as role models for that power – Rosa Parks and Jesus Christ. They both said a "No" that changed the direction of the world.

So I’m not so put off by Reverend Wright’s defiance. It is the part of the Black Church that I came to respect. And he’s not changing his tune for anybody. But sometimes, a strength is a double edged sword. And Bob Herbert [above] is talking about the other side of the coin. Barak Obama didn’t come onto the public stage as a defiant Black candidate. It’s not only not his strategy, it’s not who he is. He’s neither a Black candidate as we have known in the past, nor is he a "White Black man." And Reverend Wright can’t see that. This time, it’s the Black man who can’t transcend the color of a person’s skin. I don’t think Wright is so injured personally as Bob Herbert says. Wright thinks Obama is being a Jim Crow, betraying "blackness." Wright can’t get out of the thread of his life, a thread that has been the strength of the Black Community in the past, and see that this is about something else. He can’t see that it’s time for Black America to get over color too. Frankly, one of the things I like about Obama is that he seems to have transcended the color of his own skin.

Reverend Wright may ruin Obama. Right now, Newt Gingrich is on my television saying that Reverend Wright represents the "hard left." The spin-meisters will work this like it was the Monica Lowensky show. We’ve wondered where the Swift Boat would come from. I guess this is it. How will Barak Obama deal with this? He’s done it once, by explaining it. It worked until Reverend Wright refuted it yesterday. Obama was on a very good path – not being derailed by "distractions." So explaining and ignoring aren’t going to fly anymore. He’s faced with an impossible situation [another phrase for a double bind]. Wright’s forced him into a corner. If he denounces Wright, he’s saying that he chose a lunatic for a pastor, is betraying his blackness, and throwing Wright under the bus. If he doesn’t, he’s becoming a "black candidate." Neither path leads to victory. Neither path reflects what Obama is.

From a strategic point of view, a friend recently reminded me of Drew Weston’s book, The Political Brain, that would suggest that Obama must regain control of the narrative and express it in simple terms. Good advice. I prefer Aristotle’s version because it’s not a strategy, and it’s more authentic. Aristotle proposed that when you’re on the "horns of a dilemma" [yet another synonym for an impossible situation or a double bind], you go "between the horns." In this case, both ways of thinking about Obama’s dilemma involve reframing the issue, refuting both slippery slopes. But the reframing has to be a direct statement that clarifies what’s at stake. In this case, it’s two things. Wright’s antics bring Obama’s judgement into question. Why did he pick Wright’s church? Equally damaging was Wright’s claim that Obama was being a "politician," meaning that Obama was just saying what people wanted to hear – was being inauthentic, lying. Whatever he does in response to this crisis, it has to be something that establishes and demonstrates both his judgement and his truthfulness.