Thursday, March 20, 2008

McCain Aide Suspended, Reprimanded...   [David Freddoso]

...for circulating this YouTube video by email. The staffer in question, Soren Dayton, is a blogger here in D.C. whom I know, who was brought on to McCain's staff earlier this year. Jonathan Martin blogged on the controversy a couple of hours ago. I am of the opinion that if there's any hate-speech going on here, it's what Wright is saying in the video, not a campaign staffer's act of circulating it. I know McCain's campaign is trying to take the high ground, but there is such a thing as taking it too far. This is politics, after all.

I don't know how voters will feel about Jeremiah Wright. He should be of no real significance in this campaign. He is a small negative factor, and that's it. I don't believe in guilt by association. (Update: Some readers suggest that "guilt by association" is a misleading characterization of what is really going on, but it is accurate in the following sense:) Barack Obama does not hate America. Even in Rev. Wright's case, I'm willing at least to hear out Mike Huckabee's exhortation to cut him some slack for the really ugly and un-Christian things he preaches from the pulpit, unfortunately invoking the name and authority of God as he does so.

The real issue is not Wright, but Obama's weasel-like behavior concerning what he supposedly knew and did not know about his church and his spiritual mentor. Confronted with the controversy, he's tried to have it both ways. He's heard "controversial" things in church, but not those controversial things. Perhaps he slept through a few sermons, skipped church here or there...

He's acting like...well, like a typical politician. Like someone who would send his economic advisor to reassure Canadian officials that all his protectionist rhetoric is just a ruse to fool voters in Ohio. Like someone who would (with permission, of course) lift a few lines from a friend's speech and present them as his own.

Despite the awful music and poor editorial choices (I get the point that Wright is a racist demagogue without having to be reminded of Public Enemy's music (thanks to a reader for correcting me here) or the infamous 1968 Olympic incident), the video at least captures Obama's evasions and juxtaposes them with Wright's fiery antipathy toward America. I'm not exactly a Wright-ologist, but I hadn't seen anyone else do this in a video. It's a side of Obama that should be seen. Don't tell his legions of worshippers, but once you scratch the surface, he is nothing special — nor is he anything especially awful. He's just another politician with the politician's characteristic sincerity problem. In this, at least, he unifies the two parties.

03/20 04:52 PMShare