Reporters Get a Closer Look at the Wright Stuff

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 1:52 PM on April 28, 2008.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been steadily increasing his public profile of late, and it’s not hard to understand why. The pastor has become Public Enemy #1 in some circles, and some of his more notorious sermons from his Trinity United Church of Christ pulpit in Chicago have become such a fixture of the media’s coverage of the campaign, Wright was bound to want to mount some kind of public defense.

So, when Wright stopped by the NAACP and National Press Club this morning, the interest was so high, you’d think Wright was himself a presidential hopeful, instead of the former pastor of a leading candidate.

Did he help his case? It’s hard to say for sure, but he probably didn’t do the Obama campaign any favors.

Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor today defended the fiery sermons that have become a political liability for the Democratic presidential contender, charging that a furor over his remarks represents an “attack on the black church.” […]

Asked whether he believes that “America is still damned in the eyes of God,” Wright was unapologetic about his sermon. He recalled that he told Obama last year, “If you get elected, November the 5th I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”

Wright continued: “It’s about policy, not the American people. . . . God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something. . . . God damns some practices. And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not like America, or unpatriotic.”

At this point, I suspect Obama almost wishes Wright wouldn’t wait to “come after” him — if Wright attacked Obama, it might help his campaign.

Noting Wright’s comments this morning, Joe Klein noted, “Wright’s purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself — the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton — and destroy Barack Obama.”

Maybe, but that may not be the whole story, either.

To be sure, if the Obama campaign were responsible for Wright’s schedule between now and November, my hunch is the senator’s aides would find a nice, remote location where Wright would have no access to microphones or cameras. Or electricity.

Indeed, at one point today, Wright seemed to argue that Obama’s efforts to distance himself from his former pastor were politically motivated and less than sincere.

On the other hand, Christopher Beam makes the argument that Wright’s media push might actually help Obama.

Right now, Wright is defined as that guy you saw in that YouTube clip or looped on MSNBC. Naturally, it’s always his most heated remarks that get repeated. The more people see Wright in other contexts … the less they’ll associate him with those initial images. It doesn’t hurt that when he tries, Wright can be charm itself. […]

Wright may not be a politician, but he has a politician’s quickness — a quality that makes him remarkably entertaining to watch. When he was asked at today’s event how he feels about being an American, he diffused notions that he’s unpatriotic: “I served six years in the military,” he said. “How many years did Cheney serve?” When the moderator asked him to respond to Chris Rock’s joke that Wright is a “75-year-old black man who doesn’t like white people — is there any other kind of 75-year-old black man?” Wright had the perfect retort: “That’s just like the media. I’m not 75.” (He’s 66.) It’s moments like these that could right Wright. […]

The furor over Wright so far is nothing compared with what Republicans will drum up in the fall. John McCain announced yesterday that despite hinting that he’d leave the Wright issue alone — he asked the North Carolina GOP not to air an ad denouncing Obama and Wright — he now thinks Wright is fair game. So much for the civility race. Given that, it’s better for Wright to fight back and soften his image now than to allow his current image to calcify over the next six months. If he can go from Obama’s crazy minister to Obama’s controversial but thoughtful and witty minister, that will be a huge step in pre-empting the GOP onslaught.

Perhaps. But I’m still quite confident the Obama campaign, if given a choice, would have much preferred silence to an attempted charm offensive.

Ultimately, though, I’m still not entirely sure why Wright is the dominant story of the presidential campaign. No serious person believes that Obama agrees with Wright’s most inflammatory remarks. Over a month ago, even John McCain was saying the right things — when Sean Hannity noted the questions about Obama’s former pastor, he asked, “Would you go to a church like that?” McCain responded, “Obviously, that would not be my choice. But I do know Sen. Obama. He does not share those views.” (McCain is apparently less sure now.)

As Ezra concluded a while back, “[I]f no one believes that Obama agrees with them, then they’re just the views of some dude who knows Obama, and talks to him about spirituality. The controversy rests on everyone’s ability to treat it as something no one seems to believe it is.”