And after all John McCain’s complaints about the NCGOP and how mean and nasty they were to bring up Senator Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright, the man himself says that his relationship with his former pastor is a “legitimate political issue“. Then it should be ok for Republicans to bring it up in ads, right?
Here’s the exchange between Obama and Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: I wasnt sure whether I was even going to ask you about your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but he made it easy for me because hes now begun this
OBAMA: Right.
WALLACE: public campaign to redeem his reputation. The other night he said to Bill Moyers that he has been the target of a smear campaign.
Question: Do you think that Reverend Wright is just the victim here?
OBAMA: No. I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past. The fact that he is my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue. So I understand that.
I think that it is also true that to run a snippet of 30-second sound bites, selecting out of a 30-year career, simplified and caricatured him, and caricatured the church. And I think that was done in a fairly deliberate way.
And that is unfortunate, because as Ive said before, I have strongly denounced those comments that were the subject of so much attention. I wasnt in church when he made them. But I also know that I go to church not to worship the pastor, to worship God. And that ministry, the church family thats been built there, does outstanding work, has been I think applauded for its outreach to the poor.
He built that ministry. And I think that, you know, people need to take a look at the whole church and the whole man in making these assessments.
The good and bad news for Senator Obama is that we will get to hear more from Rev. Wright, and we can get the full context we need to make a judgment call on whether all this negative press Wright’s been getting is deserved. I say that it is. He isn’t taking back any of the inflammatory things he’s previously said, and he keeps adding more fuel to the fire as he attempts to defend his reputation and his church. Even though I disagree with Rev. Wright on 99% of the stuff he says, he did say one thing to Bill Moyers and in his speech to the National Press Club that I agree with — he said that Barack is just a politician and that he does what he does for political reasons. That’s the point that we have been trying to make — there’s nothing special about Barack other than his ability to wow people with his speeches. He believes the same nonsense on policy that Hillary does, and the left won’t see much difference in a President Obama as opposed to a President Hillary. No doubt Barack is a nice guy, but that’s not enough to make him President.