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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It?
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To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (22950)3/14/2008 9:42:08 AM
From: DizzyG  Read Replies (1) of 224750
 
Obama's pastoral problem

Rod Dreher
3:28 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008

As a general matter, I don't think it's fair to expect presidential candidates to be responsible for the wacky things religious leaders who support them say. Is it really incumbent upon Barack Obama to disassociate himself from Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton? Does John McCain really have to come out and repudiate this or that aspect of John Hagee's fundamentalist theology, just because Hagee has endorsed him. I don't think so. This is a big, religiously diverse country, and somebody's bound to be offended by the sincerely held beliefs of somebody else. It's unavoidable, and I think we ought to give candidates a lot of leeway.

But then there's the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor and the man Obama has identified as his spiritual mentor and father figure. Check out this passage from a recent sermon by Pastor Wright:

Heavy stuff. I find it hard to reconcile the irenic image Obama has with this kind of combustible, racialist rhetoric. If Wright were just any pro-Obama preacher, that'd be one thing (and not much of anything), but he's a man to whom Obama has been very close for some time, and to whom Obama looks up as a mentor. I'm just not getting what Obama sees in him, and it makes me wonder if Obama really is the uniter he's supposed to be -- or is it just an image covering a more radical kind of leftist identity politics?

Obama has addressed questions about the Rev. Wright in the past by saying that he doesn't agree with everything Wright says or believes. But the more most voters are exposed to the Rev. Wright's harsh words, the less plausible that response from Obama is going to be.
dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com
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