Obama Drama: One Wright Makes a Big Wrong — Obama Needs Counter-Rhetoric

From www.redzonepolitics.com/blogitics, Weekly Wrap

Barack Obama took a big perceptual hit this week, as videotape came to light showing his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in full inflammatory, “fire and brimstone” mode. Obama has catapulted himself to the front of the Democratic presidential primary race on his strength as a black candidate who transcends race. As one white male voter told me at an Obama rally in New Hampshire, in contrast to personalities such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Obama “doesn’t shove the race issue down your throat.”

But the rantings of Wright, now retired, present the voting majority — especially whites — with a particular brand of black America that does not translate well beyond the black “choir:” the rageful indignation of cultural victimhood. As I discuss in my book, “Democrats in the Red Zone,” that attitude is politically counterproductive for both blacks and the Democratic Party.

In the videotape, Wright is a poster child for that rageful indignation that comes across to many mainstream voters — white, black and everything in between — as over-the-top and even critical of the American government to the point of seeming unpatriotic.

Addressing one churchgoing audience (which Obama apparently was not part of that day), Wright blasted an American government he paints as dominated by privileged white people whose mission is to keep blacks down: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God bless America’?” Wright rages in the video. “No, no, no. Not God bless America. God damn America.”

It doesn’t matter whether Wright’s words may have spoken to painful truths more Americans should consider. The fact is that his vehement tone — which is apparently standard in black churches, another cultural perception issue that Democrats must deal with — is understood by many people beyond those congregations and communities as incendiary, and therefore threatening.

The airing of this tape, which right-wing talk radio and talk cable are having a field day with — and will no doubt carry on about as long as Obama is a viable candidate — comes on the heels of Michelle Obama’s clumsy statements that she has only recently become “proud” of her country and that America is “downright mean,” among other defects.

Enough about Hillary needing to reign in Bill and Geraldine. Now it’s Obama who needs to reign in his cultural allies — including his wife. By “reigning in,” this is what I mean: Get them behind closed doors and explaining to them the perceptual impact of their words and actions. In any case, many of us might wonder why Obama didn’t switch churches long ago, as soon as he realized that fraternizing with the black victimhood brigade would place his political aspirations at risk. If he underestimated the perceptual liability that association would present, then, much as I hate to admit it, he was being naive.

What a lot of white Obama supporters are telling me is that they don’t understand why he was so close to Wright in the first place. I mean, the guy married the Obamas and baptized their kids, so it’s not like they didn’t know what he was about. Maybe they just got too comfortable in their congregation and, as many of us have done in our personal and professional lives, stayed too long in a counterproductive relationship. The worst part of this issue for Obama is that it goes right to the heart of his biggest selling point: the soundness of his judgment. (OMG — Just as I finished typing that, I heard Juan Willaims say exactly the same thing on Fox News Sunday!)

As a result, Obama now finds himself with a setback on his hands. Not only are whites who support him questioning the wisdom of his personal associations, but whites less inclined to rise above their own prejudices — such as those in Ohio and Pennsylvania who are supporting Clinton in the primaries but who may also plan to support Republican John McCain in the fall — could give Obama even less of a window in which to make his case.

Obama has distanced himself from Wright. He told Keith Olbermann recently that he hadn’t been aware of Wright’s comments in that particular videotape and that he rejected Wright’s sentiments. But the biggest challenge now for the candidate will be to craft rhetoric that openly denounces the kind of black victim mentality that has placed blacks in a perception box against their own, and the Democratic Party’s, broader political interests.

Apart from individuals who are potential political Kryptonite for Obama, those who actually presume to speak for him on the campaign trail need to be given a script and instructed to stick to it under penalty of being yanked from the stage. Michelle Obama, sophisticated as she may be, has shown she’s got some things to learn about the underlying cultural perceptions within the greater American electorate.

This is where the rubber meets the road for the Obamas: individually, as a couple and as a family, they are well aware of the adverse experience that life in America has represented for many black people. Yet they cannot afford to carry the banner of that dissatisfaction with them on the broader American highway.

Obama needs whites to believe he represents a new paradigm — a paradigm that combines optimism, shared responsibility and fairness. This will mean holding blacks equally accountable to whites for their own racism and cultural failings — IN PUBLIC.

It is imperative for the values divide between black and white to be addressed so that the Democratic Party will cease to be hamstrung by those divisions. At the same time, the shared values between blacks and whites must be highlighted. If Obama has the courage to confront blacks on their need not just to demand equal treatment but to behave as equals — with all of the respect for their white fellows that implies — then he can turn the lemon of the Rev. Wright issue into (relative) lemonade.

For more on what drives racial perceptions and how candidates like Obama can help move the country beyond the counterproductive racial status quo, check out my next posting, “Getting’ Real: the Racial Reality Dems Must Face to Change the Political Tide.” This posting features excerpts on race from my book, “Democrats in the Red Zone: an Independent voter’s take on the game of political perception.”

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future