Obama said Kilpatrick would do "astounding things for many years to come"

And he was right.

Newsweek:

Long before sex, lies and texting caused Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felonies and resign on Thursday, he and Barack Obama shared a warm man-hug before a huge Motown crowd. It came 16 months ago, as Obama was launching his campaign for president with a scalding speech to the Detroit Economic Club upbraiding Detroit's automakers for not building more fuel-efficient cars. But while that speech gave Obama green street-cred, his praise of Kilpatrick as a "great mayor" who will do "astounding things for many years to come" backfired. As Kilpatrick now heads to jail for four months, for obstruction of justice, two attack ads have already appeared on the Web replaying Obama's Kwame moment. One, produced by the conservative Freedom's Defense Fund and soon going into heavy rotation on Detroit TV stations, shows Kilpatrick's mug shot, as the 10 felonies he faced scroll down the screen while Obama says, "I'm grateful to call him a friend." The ad ends ominously with the line: "You should know who Obama's friends are."

Even with Kwame Kilpatrick in the slammer, Barack Obama will be dogged by the scandal that brought down Detroit's mayor. For starters, Kilpatrick won't be around to lead the get-out-the-vote effort in dependably Democratic Detroit, which could be decisive in the toss-up state of Michigan, where Obama clings to a slim lead over John McCain. But beyond the mechanical breakdown, Kilpatrick's salacious, headline-commandeering controversy has inflamed the racial tensions that have riven this region. Detroit is 81 percent black and the poorest city in America, according to new census data, while the surrounding suburbs are 81 percent white and include some of the most affluent enclaves in the country. Ever since the riots of 1967, Detroiters have divided themselves along racial lines, and politicians on both sides of the city's cultural fault line—the 8 Mile Road made famous by Eminem—have stoked racial fears to get elected. "This Kwame Kilpatrick mess has splattered over onto the Obama campaign at the worst possible time," says veteran Detroit political consultant Sam Riddle. "Kilpatrick's brand of leadership has fed into the worst stereotypes that white voters have about black leaders."

That could explain why Obama has worked so hard lately to stiff-arm the mayor he once embraced. First, he asked him to stay away from the Democratic National Convention—which was no problem, since the mayor was wearing an electronic tether at the time and had been ordered by a judge not to travel beyond metropolitan Detroit. Then on Wednesday evening, a few hours after the prosecutor announced Kilpatrick was copping a plea, Obama issued a statement saying, "It is time for the mayor to step aside so that the city can move forward."

...

He finally admitted the obvious. He had lied under oath. The contrast of Obama's embrace of Kilpatrick and Palin's rejection of corruption could not be more stark. Obama is a guy who now has two friends who have been found guilty of felonies. Not once did he do anything to stop the corruption that was happening before his eyes.

BTW, if you guessed Kilpatrick was a Democrat because of his associations you are right, but why was Newsweek being so subtle about that fact.