Obie didn't make the sale

Obama failed to explain how a church can harmonize Wright's "God damn America" with Christ's "blessed are the peacemakers." My own limited experience worshiping in a black inner-city church has been diametrically different. Rather than Wright's hateful condemnation of white people, the message at this church contained not a tinge of racial exclusivity. [Editor: That's from Mark Hillman's latest Capitol Review column. Here's the column in full.]

Obama not so different rationalizing race, Wright

"If you really believe black people are 'fellow Americans,' then treat them as such." - John McWhorter, "Losing The Race"

If Barack Obama truly wants to transcend race, he would do well to apply the words of John McWhorter to his "explanation" of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama is supposed to be different: a messenger of hope and change, not just another beltway politician; an agent of reconciliation not grievances and reparations; a unifier who transcends partisan and racial divides.

That's why many gave him the benefit of the doubt when he explained that he didn't wear a U.S. flag lapel pin because he viewed it as a "substitute for ... true patriotism."

That's why some gave Michelle Obama a mulligan when she said, "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

That's why Obama's rating as the most liberal senator in 2007 by the respected National Journal never seemed to resonate beyond conservative circles.

However, in addressing his 20-year relationship with Wright, whom he calls his spiritual mentor, Obama sounded like every other scripted politician snared by a public relations debacle. Obama's devotion to Wright peeled back the veneer in a way that voters of every stripe could not ignore.

If he was prescient enough, according to fellow travelers, to have foreseen the perils of war in Iraq, how can he imagine that Jeremiah Wright never talked "about any ethnic group in derogatory terms" in private conversations?

If he really possesses "judgment to lead," why wasn't his judgment as keen as that of Oprah Winfrey who left Trinity United Church of Christ several years ago?

If his oratorical skills are so remarkable, why didn't he explain how sermons referring to the "US of KKKA" or "a world ... where white folks' greed runs a world in need" can conceivably coincide with aims for racial harmony?

The insurmountable obstacle for people who previously extended to Obama the benefit of the doubt is that the aforementioned can no longer be easily dismissed as aberrations or gaffes. Instead, they fit more easily into a profile of someone who doesn't afford that same benefit to others.

If U.S. flag lapel pins are symbols of superficial jingoism, were we to ignore that Obama surrounded himself with at least a half-dozen full-size flags for his speech explaining his relationship with Rev. Wright? Equally conspicuous was the absence of trademark signs sloganeering for Hope, Change, Judgment and Leadership.

Absent, too, was evidence of the courage so often assigned to Obama. Few people who take their faith seriously would continue to attend - much less donate $20,000 to - a church where the pastor regularly punctuates his sermons with rants like those Obama described as "not only wrong but divisive."

The very public rift between the Catholic church and parishioners who disagree with church doctrine on abortion and gay marriage is a marked contrast to Obama's supposed silent disapproval of Wright's message.

Moreover, Obama's assertion that Wright's church contains "the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America" should be insulting to black congregations that, regardless of their political ideology, recognize that the universal message of Jesus Christ compels Christians to preach the truth in love and to embrace forgiveness.

Obama failed to explain how a church can harmonize Wright's "God damn America" with Christ's "blessed are the peacemakers." My own limited experience worshiping in a black innercity church has been diametrically different.

Rather than Wright's hateful general condemnation of white people, the message at this church whose congregants were almost certainly aligned to the political left was vibrant, both spiritually and personally challenging, and although socially candid, contained not a tinge of racial exclusivity.

Accepting Obama's contention that Wright's public pronouncements do not square with his private persona requires, to quote Hillary Clinton, "a suspension of disbelief."

Obama's white grandmother, he says, confessed a fear of black men and uttered racial stereotypes. But she did so privately. People are generally more coarse and unguarded on any subject in their private utterances than in their public pronouncements. Obama would have us believe that Wright said things from the pulpit that he would never say privately.

The candidate who would unify us by transcending race has, unfortunately, resorted to the same race-based rationalizations that perpetuate division and thwart hopes for a post-racial society.

"A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect," McWhorter writes. Obama's desire to be elected appears to have surpassed his desire to be respected.

Where's the leadership, Gov. Ritter?

Weak, indecisive, ineffective, directionless, no clout, poorly staffed -- those are some of the descriptions of Bill Ritter that this former Senate President has heard recently from legislators in both parties and on both sides of the aisle as Colorado's freshman governor nears the end of his second legislative session. "Afraid to lead," "out of his depth," and "doesn't get it" are several more unflattering appraisals directed at the Democratic chief executive and his first floor (staff and cabinet) operation by second-floor State Capitol players in the legislative branch.

"This isn't good for Colorado, this ship of state adrift," a leading Republican told me -- even as he admitted it plays to his party's advantage in the 2008 campaign. Transportation, health care, education, and other big issues need a strong hand in the governor's chair, he said, and when that's missing as it has been during Ritter's lackluster 15 months in office, adverse consequences hit the state as a whole, partisanship aside.

Seasoned veterans in the business community and journalism seem to be reaching the same unhappy conclusion about the former prosecutor and professed (but now tarnished) pro-business, pro-life Democrat who swept in on a 2006 landslide. Little of his "Colorado Promise" agenda was realized in 2007, and action points were few in his State of the State message for this year.

Especially since his spectacular misjudgment on handing unions the key to state government last November, Gov. Ritter is said to have little influence with majority Democrats in the state House and Senate, or they with him. "He's almost like a third-party governor, in terms of that disconnect with legislative leaders," one observer said.

On the other hand, it's still only March, and much can still happen in the final six weeks of this year's legislative session. Ballot issues in the fall could prove to be another equalizer for the governor's sagging fortunes -- and there's always the Democratic Convention coming to town this summer, fraught with both upside and downside possibilities for Ritter.

We can't forget that politics is like football: the ball has pointy ends and seldom bounces straight. The Stumbling Bill of today could be sprinting again by election time. But there is no evidence as yet that his shortcomings noted in my January column, "Ritter's Bad Year," are on the way to being remedied.

Moloney's World: Dems now all lean left, forsaking JFK

(Nantucket, Mar. 22) Aside from being an incomparable setting to wrestle the demons of writer’s block, the wild bleak beauty of this wintry island 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts embodies those special charms that have long attracted me to the misty isles of the northern latitudes (think Aran, Shetland, Orkney). Presuming a taste for solitude, there are few better circumstances in which to contemplate man’s place in the universe than walking three or four miles along magnificent windswept beaches without encountering a single human being, yet always in the presence of the awesome power of Nature in the form of the huge winter surf that relentlessly pounds and reshapes these shores. First settled in 1659 --not long after the Pilgrim’s landed at nearby Plymouth Rock -- Nantucket is best known as the leader of New England’s historic whaling industry which ended in the late nineteenth century. Silent reminders of that time are in the many “Widow’s Walks” perched atop stately period homes -- architectural accommodations for the lonely women who scanned the far horizon for the sight of a sail that might herald the return after two or three years in the most distant places of those tiny wooden whaling vessels and their sturdy men who “went down to the sea in ships”.

As I walk along the cobble-stoned Main Street to the only place you can get a daily newspaper (unless of course the tiny airport is shrouded in fog), I reflect that Herman Melville once trod upon these very same rough paving stones in the days when he constructed the apotheosis of American literature, Moby Dick . (I was determined to get “apotheosis” in here somewhere as a small tribute to that late and great Renaissance man Bill Buckley, a renowned sailor who often made landfall in the nearby harbor).

My experience over forty years suggests that Nantucket’s greatly expanded summer population is politically increasingly dominated by upscale liberals (John Kerry’s “little cottage” is not far from here). Republicans, however, still own the winter.

Before I followed Ronald Reagan into that long line of Democrats who saw the light, I was a Democrat who was a minor but enthusiastic participant in the campaigns of my fellow Massachusetts Irish Catholics the Kennedys (never discount the enduring power of tribalism in politics). I yet remain in touch with a few fellow warriors from those long ago campaigns -- one retired to this island -- and as “older men” do we occasionally get together to reminisce about life’s springtime and try to make sense of all that has happened since.

Hard as it may be to believe, once there were more conservatives than liberals in the Democratic Party. In fact John Kennedy emerged from the party’s conservative wing. Eleanor Roosevelt -- always “ madly for Adlai” (Stevenson) –- absolutely despised the Kennedys and viewed them as paragons of illiberality. Recall that Bobby was a devoted employee of Senator Joe McCarthy and Jack won the White House as a more “hawkish” Cold Warrior than Richard Nixon.

My, how times and Kennedys have changed! I would suggest it is impossible to understand what happened to America in the last half century without a full appreciation of what happened to the Democratic Party.

If you ever saw a bird flying overhead with just one wing you would know that you were witnessing a wholly unnatural act. Today the Democratic Party is an un-natural bird with just one wing -- a left wing. For proof one need only observe the strange combat of Obama vs. Clinton and note the absolute absence of any genuine debate or contrast on issues. They argue whether surrender in Iraq will take nine months or maybe twelve. Hillary wants to impose government health care on 100 % of the population immediately; Obama is willing to start with 85 %. Absent any difference on issues that leaves nothing but personal attacks -- Hillary is a “monster," Barack is a plagiarist, etc.

This is the party of Jefferson?

It is Saturday night and we are gathered at a vintage island establishment interestingly called the “Brotherhood of Thieves”. A cold wet wind howls outside -- but within, both fireside and friendship warm two ex-Democrats as we speculate on how it will all turn out: not just this watershed Presidential campaign, but where history is leading the country we both love.

Bill Moloney was Colorado Education Commissioner, 1997-2007. His columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Pacific News Service.

Post-racial claim belied by Obama speech

The current furor over Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright reminds me of another seldom discussed contradiction within the Democratic party: The self-described party of inclusion is obsessed with the divisive issue of race. As a conservative I am not surprised by this, because I have long accepted that the Left is deeply attracted to the narrative of victimization and oppression at the hands of "the man" -- whether that be white males, corporations, the "government" or others wielding power in our society. I've written numerous times about the "cult of victimization" that I see among liberals that essentially takes two forms: those who feel victimized by power and those who are part of the power class but feel guilty about it. Thus you see strange bedfellows on the Left -- poor blacks, illegal immigrants, union workers, media elite and Hollywood stars all in a messy millieu of fear, guilt, anxiety and prodigious amounts of anger. In this context, the reaction to Jeremiah Wright and the Obama speech that sought to explain it is both understandable and disturbing. Obama's ability to deliver a moving speech on the subject of race was an impressive act for a candidate who has excelled at being the "non-racial candidate". His speech was rich with his personal history and attempted to put Wright's sermons in a broader context. To his credit, he did go a long way toward repudiating Wright and the comments that have gotten endless play on YouTube:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Those "statements", you'll recall, relate a whole host of incendiary comments about how America deserved the attacks on 9/11, how whites created the AIDS virus as a weapon against the black community -- and on and on and on.

Obama is careful, however, to not repudiate Wright "the man", even if separating the man and the preacher is exceedingly hard to do:

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.

Thus, for Obama, Wright's comments and their acceptance in the black community are rooted in fear -- the same kind of fear of black men his white grandmother had expressed to him in the past. This gives Wright's hateful, angry speech a legitimacy that it doesn't deserve -- as if they are on par with the words of his beloved grandmother. It's disturbing double speak: Obama repudiates the views of Wright without actually repudiating the base sentiment, or the man who delivered them. He then goes on to cite a litany of tired arguments about Jim Crow laws and historical race discrimination -- all of which he uses to explain why the black community is so angry and distrustful for white America.

Obviously, much of what Obama says is true: there has been a history of slavery and black oppression in America. That is undeniable. The important question is: Does it really still exist to the level that blacks apparently believe it does? Not only is Jim Crow long dead, but so is "Separate but Equal" and other legal and structural barriers to equality. Those barriers were put permanently to rest by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark legislation that incidentally was sponsored by white Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, and was signed by a white southern president. Through Affirmative Action and other preferences, blacks have actually by law been given real systemic advantages over whites for over 40 years. In my view, there is a deep contradiction in the words of Jeremiah Wright and his brand of black separation theology and the plain facts that are clear to anyone willing to look honestly at this issue.

My own honest view of race, the black community and the Democratic party includes the following:

-- There is a gulf between the races in America -- but it is as much a creation of the black community and "leaders" such as Jeremiah Wright who are underwritten by the Democratic party, as it is a product of real white-based racism.

-- The vitriol of Jeremiah Wright and other separatists in the black community is rooted in the 1960s -- the anger of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and other revolutionaries who lived in an age when real discrimination and racism was both accepted and sponsored by the state. But that was then. Today, the notion that blacks are systematically "kept down" by a "white America" is not consistent with the world we live in -- where a Barack Obama can go to Harvard and be within a hair of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States!

-- The core theology of Wright and other pastors in the black community is consistent with the race-based victimization mantra of the Jesse Jackson's of the world. In this way it is a self-fulfilling dogma that not only fails to empower, but also destroys the desire and ability of blacks in America to take individual responsibility for their lives -- and to join the mainstream community where education, jobs and prosperity are available to them. Why is it so hard to accept that if one black man or woman can rise to become an executive or a lawyer in America today, then that avenue is open to all blacks in America?

-- The broader Democratic party -- and white liberals in particular -- act to reinforce the notion of an ingrained, systemic racism in this country. The net effect of this is to give blacks and the black community a "pass" on both what they say and what they do. Nicholas Kristof, the liberal white columnist for the New York Times, wrote a piece after Obama's speech that illustrates this perfectly. For example, on the issue of Wright's remarks, Kristof basically acts to translate Wright's angry words that are clearly hostile to white America:

Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his church say that is an unrecognizable caricature: He is a complex figure and sometimes a reckless speaker, but one of his central messages is not anti-white hostility but black self-reliance.

So, for Kristof, the way to black self-reliance is through race-bashing white America. He goes on:

Many white Americans seem concerned that Mr. Obama, who seems so reasonable, should enjoy the company of Mr. Wright, who seems so militant, angry and threatening. To whites, for example, it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people.That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible. (Just as) many African-Americans even believe that the crack cocaine epidemic was a deliberate conspiracy by the United States government to destroy black neighborhoods.

Thus, Wright's words aren't the problem, nor is the misguided belief among blacks that there is actually truth to what he says. The problem is racism. It is white racism that causes blacks to do crack, to drop out of the free education they are provided, to destroy their neighborhoods and to foster repeat generations of black children in single parent households.

Liberals like Kristof won't dare mention the notion of personal responsibility, nor point out the obvious absurdity that giving Wright a pass on his rhetoric because others in the black community hold the same beliefs is pandering to the lowest common denominator. Such honesty would conflict with their own deep-seated sense of "white guilt" over the predicament that blacks are in. Apologize and justify -- that's the liberal solution to the race issue in America today.

The irony, of course, is this: white guilt that apologizes for black racism and that serves to further legitimize the victimization and self-segregation of blacks only serves to destroy their best hope for eliminating racial inequality: real assimilation. That is the message that Democrats and Barack Obama should be giving the black community. His speech on race and his handling of the Wright issue fell far short of that, and proves again that he is not the post-racial candidate he claims himself to be.

Walk in their shoes

(Townhall.com, Mar. 22) Imagine being told as a child: "You carry bad blood." Then imagine this stigma was placed on you by one side of your family, in reference to your heritage from the other side of the family. I honestly can't begin to imagine how that would have felt or what it would have done to me. But I think it would have marked me unforgettably. It would have stayed with me for a long time, even if I ultimately overcame it and went on to have a successful life and feel good about myself. Then try to imagine looking in the mirror as you're growing up, and having the whole society where you live send much the same message about your bloodlines and those of your relatives and everyone else who looks like you. I can't imagine that either. Even the effort to walk in those shoes gives me a stab of pain, the sense of a soul-deadening burden. These two scenarios describe, I believe without unfair exaggeration, the personal experience of Sen. Barack Obama and the collective experience of most black Americans for almost 400 years now. They've been on my mind since reading (not hearing) Obama's speech on race in American life, given March 18 in Philadelphia amid controversy over the Afrocentric, anti-American sermons of his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama didn't say his mother's mother told him in so many words that he carried bad blood. But that's the implication I take from his comments about the white grandmother's unthinking racial slurs and her expressed fear of black men. "That's me," the young boy might think. "That's my dad." Would it hurt? Would it stay with you? How could it not?

So I am not particularly offended, as many of my fellow conservatives have been, by Obama's mention of this experience in his speech. Rather I'm troubled by it. It stirs me. It takes me way out of my comfort zone, which is probably not a bad thing.

His implied equation of grandma's momentary private prejudices or bigotry with Rev. Wright's years of public rage and race-baiting does have a note of intellectual dishonesty that reflects poorly on the senator's fitness for the presidency. Yet that doesn't negate the object lesson we all have an opportunity to learn from this uncomfortable episode of the past week.

What we've seen and heard on the Trinity Church video clips -- the enthusiasm of the congregation, even more than the ranting of the pastor -- along with the constructive candor from Obama himself about seldom-discussed issues of resentment and stereotyping between blacks and whites, challenges us to walk in the shoes of African-Americans more empathetically than most of us (me for sure) may ever have done before.

And that again is probably not a bad thing, whatever you think of Barack's aspiration to the White House (I'm having none of it). What would be a bad thing is if we conservatives let this teachable moment slip away in a storm of self-righteous scolding toward the admittedly awful Jeremiah Wright and the admittedly confused folks who think he's on target.

People who are hurting tend to say hurtful things; anyone who's ever been in a bitter family or marital quarrel knows that. And you don't move toward reconciliation and healing in a toxic situation like that, merely by telling the other person (wrong as he may be) to grow up, get over it, stop being childish. You start by trying to understand, by walking in their shoes, and then slowly work back toward civil conversation with the emotional level dialed down. I can't see that it's any different in our multiracial American family of 300 million than in the blood families you and I belong to. Or is it? Tell me what I'm missing.

Let me repeat, just to be clear: Barack Obama is the wrong man to be President of the United States. Though brilliant and gifted, he is too far left, too inexperienced, and yes, too slippery and manipulative. All of those qualities, positive and negative, were evident this week in his speech on race. Michelle Obama is the wrong woman to be First Lady, and Jeremiah Wright is the wrong man to be visiting the Oval Office as spiritual advisor. Neither of them understands America well enough or, it would seem, loves her as she deserves -- warts and all.

But with that said, if these three fellow Americans of ours have provided the rest of us a chance to walk in the shoes of a long-suffering racial group that Lincoln warned would take centuries to knit back fully into our national family, it's too good a chance to miss. No matter what else comes out of the 2008 campaign, that could be one of this year's true blessings. Do as you choose, but I'll be damned if I'm passing it up.

Cross-posted on PoliticsWest.com