The Note: Wrighting the Ship

April 30, 2008 -- For the record, Sen. Barack Obama's commitment to using the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's words to discuss "the complexities of race" lasted slightly beyond the moment that Wright screamed his middle name on a public stage -- but not past the episode where he equated the American military with terrorists, or defended his proposition that the government was trying to harm black people with AIDS.

"The person I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago," Obama said Tuesday in one of those turning-point campaign moments (for better or worse).

An interesting observation, since neither is Obama the same candidate as he was six weeks ago -- nor is the race the same as it was six days ago, before Wright's wacky, weird, wondrous reemergence.

In seeking to put an end to the firestorm -- and, essentially (and finally), to his relationship with his long-time pastor -- Obama flashed the anger and indignation of a man wronged personally and professionally -- just maybe the qualities an undecided superdelegate wants to see in a presidential nominee.

Obama himself said it perfectly, in summing up the political fallout: "We'll find out."

His extraordinary news conference marked "an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture," Jeff Zeleny and Adam Nagourney write in The New York Times.

What Obamaland knew (and it wasn't hard to know it): "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," Zeleny and Nagourney write.

The shift in tone and strategy was stark -- and that's what Obama wanted his audience to notice. Now, it's the pivot that matters: Obama has a post-Wright window (until or unless the good reverend finds something else to say) and needs to make the most of it.

Obama "did in a hastily called news conference what he had been reluctant to do since controversy erupted six weeks ago over Wright's sermons, repudiating not merely the words but the worldview of a clergyman who had once been a close spiritual counselor and by Obama's account inspired him to embrace Christian faith," Mike Dorning writes in the Chicago Tribune.

For a cautious politician, these were big steps: "Obama was left with little choice but to denounce Wright more forcefully and make it clear that his relationship with the retiring minister had fundamentally changed, or risk having his presidential campaign engulfed by the controversy," Dorning writes.

The Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet quotes an "Obama adviser" saying that Wright has become a "huge distraction. At a time when Obama is trying to appeal to blue-collar and working-class voters, Jeremiah Wright is dragging this campaign into a conversation about race . . . and that's not what white voters want to hear."

"Nobody even wants to talk about it. It's a disaster," one Obama campaign source tells the New York Daily News' Michael Saul, who described "a usually upbeat headquarters was fighting off its worst morale problem since the primaries began."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos, reporting on what's next for the Obama campaign on "Good Morning America" Wednesday: "They will be announcing more superdelegate endorsements today, to try to get back on track."

Why did Obama let it get to this point? "After Obama's uncategorical repudiation yesterday of the man who presided at his wedding and the baptism of his daughters, 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," Peter Canellos writes in The Boston Globe.

"In political terms, this was a 3 a.m. phone call that went into voice mail," Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin writes.

"As definitive as Obama seemed, there are still questions about his relationship with Wright," National Review's Byron York writes. "Is it really plausible for Obama to say that he did not hear a steady stream of such stuff coming from Wright's pulpit in the last 20 years?"

Newsweek's Richard Wolffe saw it as Obama's "Sister Souljah" moment -- going farther even than Bill Clinton did in 1992 in making clear the limits of his tolerance: Throughout the campaign, "nothing came close to the emotions on display at the back of a sports arena in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Tuesday," Wolffe writes.

"The long relationship between the pastor and the politician is forever changed. And Obama has had to spend yet another day trying to regain the narrative of his campaign."

The Philadelphia speech served its purpose -- but Wright shifted the terrain since then. "Obama's public denouncement of the retired pastor stands in stark contrast to a speech on race the candidate delivered just last month," ABC's David Wright reports.

"Obama's strong words are a high stakes gamble by his campaign to control a spreading political firestorm. . . . Obama's connection to Wright runs much deeper than Clinton's to Sister Souljah."

It's the superdelegates' concerns that are themselves much deeper in the wake of the bizarre media tour launched by Rev. Wright. "He was speaking most directly to 300 or so remaining undecided Democratic superdelegates, the party regulars who are likely to determine the eventual nominee -- and who have become increasingly concerned in recent days that the Democratic frontrunner lacks the fire and the fight he will need to prevail in November," Time's Karen Tumulty writes.

Can you remember the last time Obama had a message? Wright "overshadowed campaign events that were aimed at connecting better with senior citizens and blue-collar whites," Tumulty writes.