Opinion: Barack Obama’s dilemma: Jeremiah Wright doesn’t care
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Some of the most worrisome words for Barack Obama uttered by Rev. Jeremiah Wright Monday at the National Press Club were those indicating that the presidential candidate’s voluble former pastor is washing his hands, Pontius Pilate-like, of any responsibility for what becomes of Obama’s political prospects.
Here’s the passage that should be among the most horrifying for the Obama campaign:
‘In my tradition ...what everybody has been saying to me as it pertains to the candidacy is, what God has for you is for you. If God intends for Mr. Obama to be the president, then no white racist, no political pundit, no speech, nothing can get in the way, for God will do what God wants to do.’
If Wright truly believes this, and there’s no reason to think otherwise, then it means we can expect the South Side Chicago preacher won’t be mincing words in the next weeks or months to help his one-time congregant. Far from it.
Wright clearly holds that he should be able to freely speak his mind and if that helps to derail Obama’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination or the White House, well, Wright can say that just goes to prove God wasn’t for Obama becoming the 44th president of the U.S. in the first place.
Variations of Wright’s statement is often heard among Christian believers: If God means it (fill in the blank -- job, spouse, house) is for you, then you will have it.
The problem for Obama ...
is that he has already said that he can’t or won’t disown Wright. In his race speech in Philadelphia, he essentially said he could no more break with Wright than he could African-Americans generally:
‘I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.’
After such declarative statements, Obama is pretty much stuck with a Wright who has already absolved himself of any further damage he may do to his former congregant.
-- Frank James
Frank James writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau.