On my flight back from New York last night I was watching CNN, a segment appropriately called "Digging Deeper," during which, I have to say, my jaw sort of dropped upon watching clips from Bill Moyers's interview with Jeremiah Wright. First of all, on the question of whether it is wise for Wright to come out with an interview at this point rather than go silently into the night, I differ with David Gergen a bit. He was dumbfounded that Wright would choose now to come out with an interview, re-injecting the story into the news cycle, but for me Wright comes off as such a reasonable, smart and rational guy, it totally undermines the impression you get from watching the YouTube clips, to Barack Obama's benefit. What Wright actually says in the interview, on the other hand, does Obama no favors. In response to the question about how Wright felt about Obama's Philadelphia speech in which he harshly criticized some of the things Wright had said, Wright responded:
"He's a politician and I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician and I say what I have to say as a pastor, those are two different worlds. I do what I do, he does what politicians do so what happened in Philadelphia, where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician."
Is that supposed to be some sort of defense? Talk about off-message. I don't know of a bigger slam against Barack Obama, considering the entire message and rationale of his candidacy, than to call him just "a politician" doing what "a politician" does. The implication, of course, is that any criticisms of Wright that Obama may have expressed in his speech, oh he didn't really mean them, he was just doing what politicians do. In other words: he's no better than all the rest of them.
Obama didn't throw Wright under the bus during his Philadelphia speech but I agree with Gergen on this point, Wright very much did so to Barack Obama in this interview. What was Wright thinking and more to the point what is the Obama camp thinking not keeping this guy on a shorter leash? Have they learned nothing from the loose lips of their clumsy surrogates and advisors over the past couple of months? If this is the sort of message discipline the Obama campaign is going to insist on holding their friends to, i.e. none, then this is going to be a long general election campaign if he's the nominee.
Tags: 2008 presidential election, barack obama, jeremiah wright (all tags)
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