Bruce Blog

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Bob Herbert, the Afro-American op ed columnist for the New York Times, had the most sensible answer I’ve seen in his Monday (April 29) column.

He waded right in with his lead:

“The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

“Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big time news media,–this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it.”

Then: “So there he was lecturing an audience at the National Press Club about everything from the black slave experience to the differences in sentencing for possession of crack and powdered cocaine.

“All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.”

Herbert then gets to the question. “This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why–if he is passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks–does he seem so insistent
on wrecking the campaign of the only Afican-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.”

Herbert says that “my guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant
who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to the former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.”

Obama rightly and firmly rejected Wright and his attacks. Now he should change the subject, get back to the real campaign and the real issues, and let his Afro-American and white surrogates carry on the dialog if necessary. Wright will be a killer swift boat issue only if Obama and his campaign allow it to become one.

I think he should take Clinton on in a Lincoln and Douglas style debate. I think he would win, given his oratorical skills, and it would help change the subject. But most important, Obama needs to reenergize his campaign
by injecting a strong populist appeal to his campaign theme of unifying and transformation. He needs to present the case that he has the grit and the intellect to beat the Republicans on foreclosures, the economy, the war, Iran, universal health care, the rising inequality in American life, and everything else that our despised president and his sucking up successor represents. He must offer leadership and offer real solutions and programs with passion and stick to the issues that really matter to the growing tide of Americans who are desperately angry and frustrated with Bush. That is the best way for Obama to deal with Wright and the Wright attacks to come. B3

Click here to read today’s Bob Herbert column, The Pastor Casts a Shadow.