The American Saga of Senator Barack Obama & the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (6)

by RLee Cook

“But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”
“For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past...”

“...that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”

“In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, ... are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds...It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams...”

“In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”

“For we have a choice in this country...” Senator Obama began his summation.

“...This union may never be perfect,” he firmly asserted “but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected...”

Despite her initial low-key response to the Rev. Wright controversy and description of the Obama speech as a “good” effort, Senator Hilary Clinton a few days later reversed course in the matter and indicated she herself would have broken entirely with Rev. Wright, had she been in Obama’s shoes. She said, “You don’t have a choice when it comes to your relatives”, but “you do when it comes to other situations” she stridently declared when queried by the same reporters she days earlier had responded to very demurely. Some suggested that her change in stance on the subject was due to her
increasingly dimming prospects in the eyes of most political pundits and experts of being able to surmount Obama’s formidable lead in both the delegate count as well as popular vote as the primary season winds to its early June conclusion.

In the immediate aftermath of the Wright controversy, Obama seemed to suffer in the polls slightly, but after the speech his poll numbers began to rise again and he continued to regain voter strength up until the eve of the Pennsylvania Primary when his campaign was beset by a media controversy on a different subject.

But even though Senator Obama’s recovery among Democratic and Independent voters seems certain to carry him on to win his party’s nomination, some skeptics and media experts believe the Rev. Wright matter will continue to pose a terminal threat to his effort to win the presidency. This fall they are convinced the Republicans will revisit the controversy with a ferocity many doubt Mr. Obama’s candidacy will be able to withstand.

They point to Obama’s reluctance to completely renounce Rev. Wright until developments just recently finally forced him to do so, and argue his refusal to sever ties with the controversial minister much earlier as critics, including Hilary Clinton have noted, indicates his own flawed judgment undercutting one of the major arguments he’s made in his own favor against her regarding the Iraq war.

In his speech on race in America, a subject that has rarely been forthrightly addressed by a major national political figure since the era of Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Senator Obama superbly explained his position, but it is apparent he did not say enough to silence all of his critics.

Yet this is not entirely Mr. Obama’s fault.