Obama does the Wright thing

Jonah Goldberg:

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Yes, he refused to denounce Wright fully, but he managed to seem like he was grounding his refusal in loyalty while still making it clear that Wright's words were unacceptable. In effect, he says he loves the sinner but hates the sin. In this age where politicians throw their inconvenient passengers under the bus, this was refreshing even if it was intellectually wanting.

Obama proved he's capable of dropping the old baggage. But he also proved he's even more adept at picking it back up.

"I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork," Obama said, seeming to want credit for his political bravery. "We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue . . . But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now."

But, then, he insisted that we do, in fact, dismiss Wright as a distraction. Indeed, he said that pretty much any inconvenient discussion of race is a distraction from what America really needs: a huge expansion of the welfare state.

Obama says our racial problems can be healed with more money. By "investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil-rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity."

The path for blacks, Obama insists, requires "binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans - the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family."

Meanwhile, the "real culprits" for our problems are: "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many."

Sigh. Here we go again.

For all the wonderful rhetoric and tantalizing promise of Obama and his speech, there's not much that's new here. This was largely a restatement of Wright's indictment of America, delivered in University of Chicago parlance instead of South Side Chicago diatribe.

The old baggage has been replaced with shinier suitcases, but the contents are the same....

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Wright is still a racist demagogue, but Obama is attempting to frame the debate as one in which whites who are the subject of the hateful attack are the problem. And, his answer to this "problem" is more liberalism. When stripped of his rhetoric his campaign looks even more shallow than it did during his "hope" phase. Obama deserves no praise for sticking by his baggage anymore than Sen. Byrd would deserve praise for sticking by his Klan buddies and their historical grievances. Black racism is as debilitating to blacks as racism directed toward them. It is time it was challenged and not excused.