Six weeks later, the speech hailed by liberals as one of the greatest in American history is—inoperative

Scott of Powerline has a useful recap of Wright-Obama. He starts with a long excerpt from Obama’s March 18 speech in Philadelphia, then quotes some of the slavering responses to it by liberals such as Joe Klein, who said the speech fulfilled the promise that Obama would be able to create a new sense of national unity, and Andrew Sullivan, who compared the speech to the Gospels (yes, really). Other liberals compared the speech to FDR’s first inaugural and JFK’s speech to the Protestant ministers, while Garry Wills put it on the same level as Lincoln’s justly famed Cooper Union address.

Scott comments:

Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech is still looking good 150 years later. Obama’s Philadelphia speech didn’t last six weeks.

And where does this leave the liberals who were ecstatic about Obama’s speech for the ages, now that Obama, who in that speech said that Jeremiah Wright was a part of himself he could never disown, has now disowned him? Advice to future politicians: If you want to write a speech for the ages, don’t hinge it on a nuanced defense of a ranting America-hater.

Scott then says that in Obama’s April 29 press conference ending his relationship with Wright, he ignored Wright’s racist speech to the NAACP, and only emphasized Wright’s remarks to the National Press Club in which Wright called Obama’s honesty into question. So it was not Wright’s racism that led to Obama’s disowning him (and how could it, given that Obama was long familiar with and accepting of Wright’s racist message); it was, as Obama emphasized repeatedly, Wright’s personal attack on Obama (which, as I pointed out yesterday, WAS something new and shocking to Obama) that led to the rupture.

As Scott puts it:

In Obama’s eyes, the most serious wrongdoing in Wright’s statements is their disrespect of Obama. From the revered father figure who could not be disowned, Wright has become the father from whom separation must be achieved in favor of his own identity, or the boorish relative who cannot be tolerated. The adolescent grandiosity and adolescent pettiness of Obama’s remarks are perhaps the most shocking revelations of this entire episode.

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Adela G. writes:

After reading the behind-the-scenes background of the Wright-Obama situation, my sympathy is all with the ranting reverend.

At the beginning of their relationship, Obama needed Wright, Wright didn’t need Obama. Wright could have gotten exactly where he is today without ever knowing Obama; arguably, Obama would be nowhere today without the benefit of knowing Wright.

Given their background, Wright had every reason to believe he would be present at Obama’s announcement of his candidacy last year. Obama’s snubbing him then must have cut deep. Nor did Obama reach out to the reverence publicly in the months afterward. Wright must have seen all Obama’s public words and actions since as saying to him, “So long, it’s been good (and very useful politically) knowing you.”

Put in context, Wright’s keeping silent for weeks after Obama’s “transcendent” race speech shows admirable self-discipline. His performances since is merely payback proportionate to the insult.

In my opinion, both men are so un-American that they should be stripped of their citizenship. But on a personal level, I can’t help feeling for and with Wright. Nothing I’ve read indicates he set out to use Obama; apparently, he welcomed him into the fold sincerely and with no ulterior motives. Over the past year, he has been made aware (no doubt painfully) that that sincerity was not reciprocal and that he was being dropped by Obama like a bad habit. (I can just hear echoes of Stanley Ann yelling about white Americans, “They are not my people!”)

It’s as ugly a spectacle of personal and political betrayal as I can recall seeing in public. It has only increased and solidified the contempt I feel for Obama.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 01, 2008 01:39 PM | Send