Senator Obama and His Minister

The New York Times’ lead: "Obama broke forcefully on Tuesday with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., in an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture." More: "At a minimum, the spectacle of Mr. Wright’s multiday media tour and Mr. Obama’s rolling response grabbed the attention of the most important constituency in politics now: the uncommitted superdelegates - party officials and elected Democrats - who hold the balance of power in the nominating battle."

The Los Angeles Times writes, "Some black leaders said Tuesday that they were frustrated at Wright for undertaking a publicity tour in recent days that may have harmed the chance to elect the first black president. And a number of African American church leaders expressed alarm that Wright, whose views on social issues are far to the left of most black clergy, claimed on Monday to speak for all black churches. ‘I wish that Jeremiah, my friend, had kept his eye on the prize,’ said the Rev. Frank Madison Reid III, pastor of a large African Methodist Episcopal congregation in Baltimore who studied with Wright and has invited him regularly to preach at his church. ‘And the prize here for America, for all Americans, is that we can elect the first black man for the presidency.’”

The Washington Post: “At a meeting of black religious leaders at the Howard University School of Divinity on Tuesday, Wright declined to address the firestorm that his remarks had ignited. ‘You heard what I said [Monday] morning,’ he told a reporter. ‘I just wish that the media would focus on more of what they are saying in there, because they are trying to make this about me and Barack.’”

The New York Post: “After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn't know about Jeremiah's views during those years, that he wasn't familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn't hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal," said the source, who has deep roots in Wright's Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter. 'Jeremiah is trying to defend his congregation and the work of his ministry by saying what he is saying now," the source added. "Jeremiah doesn't care if he derails Obama's candidacy or not . . . He knows what he's doing. Obviously, he's not a dumb man. He knows he's not helping.'"

The Boston Globe: “The condemnation was a dramatic shift for Obama, who had tried to navigate a personal and political minefield: maintaining a relationship with the minister who brought him to Christianity, performed his wedding, and baptized his two daughters, while distancing himself from Wright's most incendiary sermons and trying to quell a controversy that threatened to undermine Obama's campaign's focus on racial unity.”

The Washington Post’s editorial page mostly praises Obama denouncing Wright yesterday. “Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment… But Mr. Obama is right when he says that his entire career is antithetical to the divisiveness of the Rev. Wright's comments. We've found things to cheer and things to criticize about Mr. Obama during this long campaign, but we don't see how anyone could question his commitment to transcending old racial battles and finding common ground. The Rev. Wright doesn't speak for the candidate, and we hope the pastor doesn't become a continuing excuse for political ads built on racial fears.”

The New York Times’ editorial page: “It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign.” 

Maureen Dowd: "The Illinois senator doesn’t pay attention to the mythic nature of campaigns, but if he did, he would recognize the narrative of the classic hero myth: The young hero ventures out on an adventure to seek a golden fleece or an Oval Office; he has to kill monsters and face hurdles before he returns home, knocks off his father and assumes the throne. Tuesday was more than a Sister Souljah moment; it was a painful form of political patricide. ‘I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency,’ Obama said. In a campaign that’s all about who’s vetted, maybe he should have."

The Globe’s Canellos writes that “voters and other political observers will inevitably wonder what took so long -- and how Obama could have misjudged someone to whom he was very close.” 
 
But the Globe’s Lehigh writes, “So as we begin yet another round of discussion about the radical reverend, let me offer a radical proposition. What's really relevant here is not what Jeremiah Wright says but what Barack Obama believes.” More: “With the wrathful reverend now delightedly reinjecting himself into the headlines, that's precisely what Obama needed to do. ... And yet, no matter what conspiracy theories the reverend subscribes to and no matter what moral equivalencies he draws, it's Obama, not Wright, who is the presidential candidate.

Some editorials hit Wright harder than anyone else, like this one in the Cleveland Plain Dealer…  

… and this one from the San Antonio Express-News. 

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune believes Obama will face more Wright tests. After watching Wright on Monday, the paper doesn't seem to believe Wright will simply fade away. 

A Strained Wright-Obama Bond Finally Snaps

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

When Barack Obama, his wife and children at his side, announced last year that he was running for president, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. was not there. He had been uninvited by Mr. Obama from delivering an invocation.

Late Monday night, in the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, N.C., Barack Obama’s long, slow fuse burned to an end. Earlier that day he had thumbed through his BlackBerry, reading accounts of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s latest explosive comments on race and America. But his remarks to the press this day had amounted to a shrug of frustration.

Milestones: Barack Obama and Reverend Wright

Loss and Furor Take Toll on Obama, Poll Finds (May 1, 2008)

Top, Paul Sancya/Associated Press; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Mr. Wright’s multiday media tour of the last week was the breaking point in a 20-year relationship with Mr. Obama.

Only in this hotel room, confronted with the televised replay of the combustible pastor, did the candidate realize the full import of the remarks, his aides say. At the same time, aides fielded phone calls and e-mail from uncommitted superdelegates, several demanding that the candidate speak out more forcefully.

As Mr. Obama told close friends after watching the replay, he felt dumbfounded, even betrayed, particularly by Mr. Wright’s implication that Mr. Obama was being hypocritical. He could not tolerate that.

The next afternoon, Mr. Obama held a news conference and denounced his former pastor’s views as “divisive and destructive,” giving “comfort to those who prey on hate.” And so, with those remarks, a tightly knit relationship finally came apart — Mr. Wright had married Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, and baptized their children.

Theirs was a long and painful falling out, marked by a degree of mutual incomprehension, friends and aides say. It began at the moment Mr. Obama declared his candidacy, when he abruptly uninvited his pastor from delivering an invocation, injuring the older man’s pride and fueling his anger.

Mr. Obama’s campaign has been striking for its discipline. This is a candidate who prides himself on his coolness and singleness of purpose, not to mention his ability to take on opponents as formidable as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president. But Mr. Obama discovered one figure who has confounded him, his own pastor.

In recent months, the candidate has tried to distance himself from Mr. Wright and his often radical views, even as he felt compelled to understand and explain his former pastor to a larger, predominantly white political world.

As for Mr. Wright, he saw a cascade of perceived slights coming from the campaign of a bright young follower whose political ambitions were tugging him away from Trinity United Church of Christ. He saw the church he had founded coming under pressure from reporters and critics, forced to hire security guards. And he made no secret of whom he blamed: Mr. Obama’s political adviser, David Axelrod, a white Chicago political operative.

Only a few years ago, the tightness of the bond between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright was difficult to overstate. Mr. Obama titled his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” after one of Mr. Wright’s sermons, and his pastor was the first one he thanked when he gained election as a United States senator in 2004. “Let me thank my pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ,” Mr. Obama said that night, before going on to mention his family and friends.

In this learned and radical pastor, Mr. Obama found a guide who could explain Jesus and faith in terms intellectual no less than emotional, and who helped a man of mixed racial parentage come to understand himself as an African-American. “Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black,” Mr. Obama wrote in his autobiography “Dreams From My Father.”

At the same time, as Mr. Obama’s friends and aides now acknowledge, he was aware that, shorn of their South Side Chicago context, the words and cadences of a politically left-wing black minister could have a very problematic echo. So Mr. Obama haltingly distanced himself from his pastor.

Mr. Obama announced in early 2007 that he would be running for president. He invited Mr. Wright to deliver the invocation at the event in Springfield, but the evening before the event, Mr. Wright answered his cellphone and heard an apologetic soon-to-be candidate. Rolling Stone had just published a profile of Mr. Obama that included some colorful snippets from the pastor’s sermons.

“ ‘You can get kind of rough in the sermons,’ ” Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama told him. “ ‘Rather than have you out front, we thought it would be best to not have you do the invocation.’ ”

Mr. Obama then asked whether the Rev. Otis Moss III, who would soon succeed Mr. Wright at Trinity, could speak instead. Mr. Wright agreed, even offering to call the younger preacher. (These quotes are drawn from a year-old interview with Mr. Wright; he shared some of his cellphone messages with a reporter).

“Actually, we’ve already called him,” Mr. Obama told him.

A few minutes later, Mr. Wright got his daughters on the telephone line. “I’m only going to say this once,” he said. “Don’t look at TV tomorrow.”