The Note: Black & White Stall
A critical speech at a difficult moment for Obama campaign.
March 18, 2008 -- Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday seeks to frame the presidential campaign on uneasy terrain that both is and isn't his.
That's because his subject -- race in America -- both is and isn't central to his campaign. That is to say, his candidacy has been about moving beyond racial divisions -- and now those schisms have crashed their way back into the campaign in a way that raises central questions about his background and his candidacy.
It's with the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright having spread across the campaign -- and with him winning states with 90 percent of the black vote and 30 percent of the white vote -- that Obama takes the stage at 10:15 am ET at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Obama, D-Ill., knows how to give a speech (and Michelle Obama rearranged her travel schedule to be there with him, for underlined, boldfaced emphasis). But the Obama brand has never been in as much danger as it is with the Wright controversy, and the Clinton campaign could be getting its wish: The candidate who is black is becoming the black candidate.
Obama "will repeat his earlier denunciations of the minister's words, aides said," Jodi Kantor and Jeff Zeleny report in The New York Times. "But they said he would also use the opportunity to open a broader discussion of race, which his campaign has said throughout the contest that it wants to transcend."
Kantor and Zeleny report some advisers having told him not to deliver such a speech. "Five weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, Mr. Obama had hoped to be refining his strategy to win over the support of white male voters -- a demographic that began to slip away in his Ohio defeat."
Obama's larger problem: Just as he's trying to quell doubts among Democrats about his candidacy -- and as he argues that words matter -- here come words from his spiritual mentor are pretty close to impossible to explain away.
"I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign," Obama told PBS' Gwen Ifill Monday night. "I think part of what has always been the essence of my politics, not just this campaign, but my life, is the idea that we've got to bring people together."
(If he can draw a straight line from Wright's words to that place, he's better than all of us thought.)
Guidance from the Obama campaign: "He'll discuss the controversy surrounding the offensive remarks made by Reverend Wright, but also why they were so contrary to the purpose of his candidacy, which is based on the recognition that there is far more that unites us than divides us."
Per ABC's Jake Tapper: "The speech will address not just Wright's comments, but the context of that kind of fiery rhetoric in black churches, and the importance of moving beyond the battles of the past."
Tapper reports: "More pressing questions for Obama, of course, may be the political ones. Why wasn't this issue dealt with until now? What else do voters not know about Obama? And how does his pledge to unite the country square with his attendance at a church where those of his mother's hue might not feel comfortable?"
The good news for Democrats: This untested candidate is being tested -- severely, suddenly, and publicly. "The inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has confronted Obama with the most severe test of his presidential campaign and, quite likely, of his public career," Politico's John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei write. "He is now facing a full-blown and fast-moving political crisis in which his reputation as a leader with a singular ability to transcend racial divisions and unite Americans is in jeopardy."
Here it is (in black and white): "A successful address would go a long way toward answering Hillary Rodham Clinton's complaint that Obama has never shown he can handle the rough-and-tumble nature of modern political combat," Harris and VandeHei write. "A failure could leave many of the white independent voters -- a key group behind Obama's swift rise in national politics -- doubting whether he is really the bridge-builder and healer he has portrayed himself to be."
Yes, the Clinton campaign is getting its wish (with apologies to President Clinton -- this was no mere myth-making, and no media "mugging," whereby the Clintons hoped Obama would be pigeon-holed by race).
But it won't be enough to play victim.
"Obama's words--in a speech here Tuesday near Independence Hall--about race and Wright will determine if his campaign will be crippled by the Wright controversy," Lynn Sweet blogs for the Chicago Sun-Times. "But if his approach is to 'blame Washington' for his political problems stemming from his association with Wright and Tony Rezko . . . it will be harder to get this episode behind him."
"Obama has put himself forward as a candidate who can move beyond America's racial divisions, and the controversy over Wright has challenged that image," Mike Dorning writes in the Chicago Tribune. "Throughout his campaign, Obama has directly addressed race only on rare occasions and sought to prevent his campaign from being consumed by the topic."
