If Obama had an unflinching willingness to toss anybody under the bus, he would have tossed Rev. Wright under the bus back in March, instead merely distancing himself while throwing grandma under the bus. Because he flinched that time, he suffered double damage when Wright returned to display his full nuttiness, in triplicate, at the NAACP and the National Press Club.
It must be attributed to political inexperience. There is no other explanation for the behavior.
First, Obama threw Wright overboard by disinviting him to deliver the invocation at his announcement ceremony. Then, he could "no more disown him than ... his own grandmother". Then, he ultimately caved like a one-egg pudding and threw him overboard.
Obviously, there was uncertainty as to just how big of a problem it could be -- and this suggests that Obama is much further out of the mainstream than he realizes -- if he thought, even for a microsecond, that Wright was going to fly with the American people, he has to be way, way, WAY out there.
Of course, this is all secondary -- because what really matters is just how close Obama is [was] to this guy. He named his book after one of his sermons, Wright was the first person Obama thanked after being elected Senator in '04. This is not some "distant figure" and the racial, anti-American rhetoric is not foreign to Obama as he would have us believe. More rationally, it is part-and-parcel of Obama's political and religious makeup. |
