20080324 New York Times Op-Ed: Let’s Not, and Say We Did by William Kristol

New York Times Op-Ed: Let’s Not, and Say We Did by William Kristol

Op-Ed Columnist

Let’s Not, and Say We Did By WILLIAM KRISTOL

Published in the New York Times on March 24, 2008

I shuddered only once while watching Barack Obama’s speech last Tuesday.

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It wasn’t when he posed the rhetorical questions: “Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?”

The real question, of course, is not why Obama joined Trinity, but why he stayed there for two decades, in the flock of a pastor who accused the U.S. government of “inventing the H.I.V. virus as a means of genocide against people of color,” and who suggested soon after 9/11 that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

But orators often ask themselves the convenient questions, not the difficult ones. And Barack Obama is an accomplished orator.

Nor was I shocked when Obama compared Reverend Wright, who was using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment, with his grandmother, who may have said privately a few things that made Obama cringe, or with Geraldine Ferraro, whom “some have dismissed ... as harboring some deep-seated bias.”

After all, politicians sometimes indulge in ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point. And Barack Obama is an able politician.

And I didn’t shudder when Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright than he could disown the black community. I did think this statement was unfair to many in the black community, and especially to all those pastors who have resisted the temptation to appeal to their parishioners in the irresponsible and demagogic manner of Reverend Wright.

But ambitious men sometimes do a disservice to the best in their own communities. And Barack Obama is an ambitious man.

The only part of the speech that made me shudder was this sentence: “But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.”

Read the entire column here: Let’s Not, and Say We Did By WILLIAM KRISTOL