Hagee And Wright
Rod says:
But Jeremiah Wright is not just any far-out left-wing minister. He is Obama’s spiritual mentor, and has been for a long time. As we’ve learned from Obama’s biographical details, young Obama was lost and searching for an identity. His father had abandoned him, and he wasn’t sure where and how he fit in to the black community. He found a father figure in Wright and a connection to the black community in Wright’s church. The degree of separation between Obama and Wright, versus McCain and Hagee, is far less.
First, a few things should be stated clearly about Hagee and McCain. This is supposed to be a free country, and Hagee is free to express his dreadful views, as is Wright, and I am exceedingly tired of the hunt to shut people out of political discourse because they or people they associate with do not toe this or that line. Watching certain libertarians pathetically pursue mainstream “respectability” in the wake of the newsletters business with the Paul campaign was enough to make me ill. These are the sorts of people who will abandon their most popular spokesman in over a generation so that they can retain “credibility” in the eyes of people who wish them dead. Meanwhile, the thing that should really disturb people is the dangerous policies that Hagee, McCain and Obama have endorsed in the past in the Near East. Bashing Catholics is distasteful and wrong, but Hagee has done far more concrete damage by lending his name and his influence to the excessive bombing of Lebanon.
Also, there is such a thing as loyalty, and one of the best things that can be said about Obama is that he seems to understand that loyalty entails keeping faith with friends and colleagues after it has become politically dangerous to do so. A lot of people give his church grief for preaching against an aspirational “middle-classness,” and I understand the objections to this view, but at its core this view entails a call to solidarity with your community and a willingness to remain loyal to that community even though better opportunities may beckon beyond the horizon.
Obama really shouldn’t have to answer for what Wright says, but I also think that his loyalty to Wright should not be an occasion for bashing the man. There are plenty of things in his record, or the lack thereof, that provide reasons to find fault with Obama. Despite the manifest unfairness about the way that the Paul campaign was treated over statements in decades-old newsletters that were objectively far less offensive than things Wright has said in very recent memory, especially when compared to the pass Obama has received and continues to receive from the media, and despite the profoundly dishonest double standard applied to Paul and Obama, I am not interested in criticising Obama along these lines. Obviously, I don’t share Wright’s views, and Obama claims not to share all of them, but I have to ask seriously what kind of man Obama would be if he disowned his spiritual father for the sake of the approval of others (who may not give their approval even if he did what is being demanded). No one that I would want to entrust with any office of importance, that’s for sure.
That is the real difference between Obama’s modest distancing of himself from Wright and McCain’s embarrassing embrace of Hagee. McCain does not belong to Hagee’s congregation, he has no duties or obligations to him, and yet he welcomes Hagee’s support in the most cynical fashion. We take McCain’s claim that he disagrees with Hagee’s dreadful views at face value, while he receives credit from Hagee’s endorsement as evidence that social conservatives and pro-Israel evangelicals have given him their seal of approval. Hagee is absurdly accepted as a mainstream figure because he strikes the “right” pose on Israel policy, whatever his own reasons for doing so, while Wright receives opprobrium at least in part because he does not. At the same time, Obama rejects Wright’s ludicrous and objectionable views, but for some reason he must go beyond that and publicly turn against the man who brought him into the church. That strikes me as a deeply disturbing demand. If Obama is to be judged by the far-left company he keeps, one need only peruse his voting record.
No doubt Obama would be better off politicaly, and it would help his career, if he dropped Wright like a stone, but he would be a far more respectable and decent man if he refused to throw his mentor under the bus to appease the media, his critics and even his admirers. I still wouldn’t vote for him, but I could have some respect for him as someone with a degree of integrity.
Update: Obama has written a response to the controversy.
Second Update: Wright has left the campaign, and Obama appeared on MSNBC on Friday to address the matter.
Filed under: politics
I discuss Haggee/McCain, Farrakhan/Obama and Ron Paul here.
Daniel is absolutely right. This game of “gotcha” where a political leader must dump - “repudiate, condem, etc.” - some acquaintance or friend because of something stupid or politically incorrect they may have said is so childish. Public figures like Obama or McCain have their own track record and I frankly respect someone more who will stand by a friend (or a pastor) and say: I may not agree with everything he/she says, in fact I don’t, but he is my friend, relative, pastor, etc.
I think the case of political relationships (say McCain with Hagee or Hillary with Ferraro and Obama with Power) are quite different as these are marriages of political convenience.
“No doubt Obama would be better off politicaly, and it would help his career, if he dropped Wright like a stone, but he would be a far more respectable and decent man if he refused to throw his mentor under the bus to appease the media, his critics and even his admirers.”
In the end, Paris will be worth a Mass to the junion Senator from Illinois. Wright will be enthusiastically be thrown under the bus, as more of these tapes leak out.
“I am not interested in criticising Obama along these lines. Obviously, I don’t share Wright’s views, and Obama claims not to share all of them, but I have to ask seriously what kind of man Obama would be if he disowned his spiritual father for the sake of the approval of others (who may not give their approval even if he did what is being demanded).”
In the end, I would agree that it would be rather churlish for Obama to do what I have described above, though I’m fairly sure that the very canny and hyper-ambitious Obama has already rehearsed this “Sister Souljah” moment with his pastor.
Daniel, when we still had Mitt Romney to kick around, you stated that it was perfectly acceptable to vote for or against a candidate based on the religious tradition they claim for their own. Wouldn’t any discussion of voting for or against a candidate on these grounds by nceessity start with an investigation of that candidate’s theology?
Daniel,
I am inclined to agree with much of what you say here. There clearly is a range of double standards at work in the ways that these various situations (McCain and Hagee, Huckabee and Hagee, Obama and Wright, Obama and Farrakhan, Paul and Rockwell) have been treated by the mainstream and non-mainstream medias, and those standards have everything to do with color, creed, and how “acceptable” we find the views of the figures in question. (Hell, even Farrakhan deserves the benefit of the doubt on a lot of those crazier statements.) And you’re right: really coming out strongly against Rev. Wright - “dropping him like a stone”, as you say - would be a disappointingly cynical and gutless move by Obama, and he certainly shouldn’t be forced into doing such a thing. This is, after all, the man who led him to become a Christian.
I do think, though, that Obama ought to say a good deal more about where he stands with respect to Wright’s more radical claims. Maybe he has done this already and I’ve just missed it (hello, Jonah Goldberg), but Steve Sailer said today that Obama “has appeared to be extremely reluctant to spell out exactly where he disagrees with his pastor other than over his spiritual advisor’s admiration for Louis Farrakhan”, and if this is right, then it seems to me that more needs to be done.
This doesn’t seem to me to be an instance of a double standard; I would demand the same thing if, for example, McCain were a regular attendee of, or had strong roots in, Hagee’s church. The key point here is that we all know that McCain’s embrace of Hagee is just cynical opportunism. This makes me sick to my stomach and is one of the many reasons I won’t vote for the man, but I don’t think that it’s any reason to think that McCain is, for example, anti-Catholic. Moreover, we already knew that most of Hagee’s crazier political stances - including, for example, his views on the bombing of Lebanon - were ones that McCain shares, or at least that he is committed to pretending to share in order to advance his political career. So on both fronts there’s very little that’s genuinely startling about the Hagee situation. That’s just how politics go, and it’s a big part of why I don’t vote.
Rev. Wright, on the other hand, has played a hugely important role in Obama’s (extra-political) life. And so while I do think, for this reason, that it’s genuinely admirable that Obama has been unwilling to “reject and denounce” him, I find Rev. Wright’s rhetoric startling enough that, given the closeness of their association, I’d like to hear Obama come out and explain - in real words, not just empty rhetoric - exactly what it is that he does think about these issues. Wright comes across in that clip as a very, VERY angry man, with a lot of very, VERY crazy views, and it’s hard for me not to worry that Obama - who is quite the unknown quantity, really - is closer to him and his views, or at least more willing to come under his influence, than he ought to be. It’s exactly the fact that their relationship is spiritual and not merely political - which is, as you’ve said, sufficient reason not to demand that Obama crucify the man - that makes it so worrying.
All the Republicans need to do is make a TV-commercial with a clip of the candidate’s wife she has never in her adult life been proud of her country, a clip of the candidate’s “spiritual adviser” shouting “God damn America”, and a clip of the candidate himself refusing to wear a pin with the American flag. Just run that throughout October and McCain won’t even have to do any campaigning. Faced with that few in the white working class will ever vote for Obama.
Whether that is fair or not is a different question. But the press has done the Democratic party a great disservice in not focusing on this earlier - either getting it out of the way as an issue, or revealing for the party members at an early stage that an Obama candidacy would be disastrous.
“But the press has done the Democratic party a great disservice in not focusing on this earlier - either getting it out of the way as an issue, or revealing for the party members at an early stage that an Obama candidacy would be disastrous.”
Agree completely. Obama would be in a much better position had this story popped up in March 2007, rather than in March 2008.
Maybe. At the very least, his party would be better off; if this is going to kill his chances for the presidency, better for them that it had happened before he had the nomination sewn up.
As a liberal, I believe most of Paul’s political positions to be appalling, and those newsletters to be deeply offensive and disturbing (yes you are responsible for the things that are ghostwritten in your name).
However, it should give liberals and conservatives alike great pause that the only candidate to make a substantive critique against imperialism was Ron Paul.
Whatever, you may think about Paul’s ideology (and I do not have a high opinion at all), it still remains undeniably true that the full throated embrace of imperialism promulgated by both the Democrats and the Republicans is and remains far, far more morally objectionable than anything Paul or his supporters have said.
Regarding RonPaul - I would have voted for him, despite disagreeing with him on almost everything, and despite the newsletters, because of his anti-interventionism.
But come on - the newsletters went out under his name, for goodness sake. Sure, he didn’t write them, but they were apparently written (at least in part) by very close associates who are still part of his circle. How is that not at least a legitimate issue?
Daniel, didn’t you spend many months defending in principle evangelical hostility to Romney solely on the basis of their views on mainstream Mormon theology?
In Obama’s case, it’s not just a question of a few wayward remarks by Wright or his views on Hypostatic Union. Obama, clearly feeling insecure about his place in the world, chose to identify himself with this black church, and his pissed off black wife, and thus root his spirituality in a Marxist liberation theology, anti-American, anti-White church and community. His Church teaches that white people and America are bad, the source of evil, and all the rest.
It’s not a question of loyalty, but of sanity, for any white that would dare to vote for this Al Sharpton with a better hairdoo. as well as for Obama himself to so reject his white mother, his white grandparents, his mostly white life, and the various gifts white society gave to him, most dramatically in letting him into Harvard.
Obama is deliberately vague about racial issues, but it’s clear that at his core, he’s a leftist aiming at a Burkean/Fabian advanc eof leftist and pro-black ideals. In other words, he’s a skilled politician with an evil agenda. His hair-trigger willingness to attack anyone that criticizes him as racist is a harbinger of things to come. Far from healing our nation, any state, county, or person that doesn’t vote for Obama risks having his/its motives questioned and worse.
I’m increasingly of the view this guy would do more to create social and racial friction of the worst kind if he’s somehow elected, and well-meaning white moderates that might vote for him should see what we’re getting into.
We of course have three terrible choices in McCain, Obama, and Hillary. But at least Hillary or McCain are not going to become “symbols” of a New America or whatever Manichaean-Messianic-Lincolnesque nonsense Obama’s spouting this week.
Roach,
If you believe that his views mirror his minister’s views, despite the facts that (1) he has explicitly disavowed those views, and (2) those views are inconsistent with hundreds of speeches and other communications over the years, well, then, clearly you aren’t going to be voting for him. But then, you probably weren’t anyway. His voting record … is what it is. Left of center, certainly., But, if anything, even more proof that he does not share the minister’s views.
His response to the controversy thus far has struck just the right note. Clear disagreement, without pushing the man under the bus.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Obama. But for those people disposed to vote for him in the first place - whether enthusiastically or, like me, reluctantly - there isn’t anything here that should or will change minds.
And he isn’t, at all, vague about racial issues. It’s one thing to say you don’t believe what he says about those issues 0 fair enough, politicians do lie, and even i am at least somewhat skeptical of some of what he says - but what he does say on race, whatever you think of it, is 180 degrees from what the minister says.
Regarding Roach’s comments:
“It’s not a question of loyalty, but of sanity, … as well as for Obama himself to so reject his white mother, his white grandparents, his mostly white life, and the various gifts white society gave to him, most dramatically in letting him into Harvard.”
It appears that your comments lend inadvertent proof to Jeremiah Wright’s assertion that this is really “White” America.
And to state that Obama has rejected his mother and grandparents is luducrous. In case you haven’t noticed, if you look black in this country, you are treated as if you are black. I have a friend who is biracial, and she “passes” as white, while her sister looks black, and they have had very different experiences in their lives.
While I don’t agree with everything that Rev Wright says, there are plenty of white people who share his political beliefs (and they are not necessarily called racist). And when he speaks about the racisim in this country, he is not that far off. It is painful for many people, black AND white, to look deeply into how slavery, jim crow laws and racism has affected everyone in this country. There is still alot of healing and understanding that needs to happen.
– from an American who happens to be white.
I guess I should have known this post would generate a lot of comments. Let me try to address as many of the points as I can.
First, yes, I have argued and would still argue that it is legitimate for people to include a person’s religious beliefs in deciding whether or not to vote for the candidate. I assume that many people will take Obama’s association with this church as a significant reason not to vote for him, and that is a legitimate response to make. Expecting the candidate to abandon his own church or condemn his own pastor is unreasonable, and no one would expect that of anyone, not even Romney.
There would be nothing wrong or “sinister,” as someone people have described anti-Mormon sentiment, in holding Obama responsible for *his* decision to join this church. But what we are talking about is different. The demand to reject Wright would be akin to having Romney turn on the LDS church on account of its past restrictions on non-whites, which some journalists tried to get him to do. Maybe I didn’t give him enough credit at the time, but Romney refused to do that, and in this he was right.
Rep. Paul did take responsibility for the newsletters. The issue ought to have died once Paul repudiated the most objectionable views published in them, but in fact it was kept alive for weeks after that.
I think it is fair to call on Obama to clarify what he thinks, and it would be wise for him to do that anyway. Obviously, I agree that his agenda is profoundly wrong for the country, or else I wouldn’t spend as much time on it as I do. To the extent that his church makes journalists pay more attention to Obama’s relationship with the far left, this story will have served some useful purpose in focusing more on his record and his choices.
Further, while I am not going to criticise Obama about his ties to Wright it is inevitable that there will be tremendous pressure on him to reject Wright. How he responds will tell us a lot about him.
Whether he distances himself from Wright will let us know if he’s a subversive black power racist that is very clever, lacks honor, and wants to be President. Or, if he’s a black power racist that also has personal honor within his tribe.
You don’t go to a church for years that you hate and disagree with, so I don’t buy this “he’s not his pastor defense.” It’s not like this is a Church with any life outside the pastor, such as the Catholic or Orthodox Church. It’s a black nationalist racist anti-white Church that sprung up under and around Jeremiah Wright and anti-white black extremists. Some of these extremists got good jobs and suits, but they still want to keep it real, so they go to this nutty church. For blacks, the ghetto and “hate whitey” defines authenticity. It’s apparent in almost every successful black, even Haley Berry and her wacked out acceptance speech at the academy awards. And this idea that we need to respect “cultural differences” in what is plainly an anti-American and anti-white black power agenda is the real icing on the cake. In other words, commit a crime often enough and it’s just the way it is.
Look, his vaguness and rosy generalities are obvious. We’ve seen the clove hoof. His racist anti-white leftist agenda is plain. It’s plain from his first book. It’s plain from his support of racist affirmative action policies. It’s plain from his rejection of his white identity. It’s plain from his rejection of Farrakhan’s anti-semitism (necessary in the Democratic Party) but silence about his anti-white racism. It’s plain in his choice of wife. It’s plain in his messianic rhetoric. And even if certain self-hating whites endorse him, he and his agenda are still objectively anti-white and anti-American. He talks of Jena, but you’ll never hear him talk about these two beautiful promising girls gunned down by black criminals in Durham and Auburn, yet this is the real problem in America, not some scourge of nooses.
Like I said above, this guy is Al Sharpton with a better haircut and a gift to gab. He’s very dangerous.
Do you honestly believe this to true; that a high profile white person who advanced the same claims about blacks that Wright does towards whites and others would not blasted as a racist by the entirety of the media and political establishments?
I’m certain that Don Imus and Fuzzy Zoeller (amongst others), both of whom were excoriated by the great and the good for a one-time offhand puerile remark, rather than years of venomous statements, would beg to differ with you.
Roach, why is Wright’s so-called black-power agenda any worse morally than your white-power advocacy.
“…the various gifts white society gave to him, most dramatically in letting him into Harvard.”
Seems to suggest that its the white power structure that chooses who does and doesn’t get into Harvard, which would affirm the existence of a white power structure.
So Wright advocates apparently a black-power agenda, which necessarily contests white-power. Why is his agenda worse than yours?
Daniel, I’d be interested in your take on Obama’s Huff post statement . I tend to think it does a pretty good job of threading the needle - standing behind the pastor personally while pretty strongly condemning his remarks.
OTOH, if there are a bunch of earlier videos out there along the same lines (not inconceivable) the Huff Post statement may end up being pretty problematic politically.
But he did, I think, pass your loyalty test (at least, to the extent he realistically could without completely kissing his campaign goodbye).
Obama’s response was reasonably clear, and he gave an explanation that will probably satisfy most people following the controversy. The use of the word “appalling” was a good touch. However, I think he referred to Wright’s remarks so generally that it probably won’t lay the matter to rest. Also, since these videos have been plastered all over the Web for the last couple of days Obama needs to make some extended remarks on camera to complement the written piece.
I’m inclined to agree with you on all counts, and perhaps go a step further and say this will be a non issue (for anyone who is a potential Obama voter to begin with) a week from now. But let me play devil’s advocate.
Let’s set aside some of the more inflammatory remarks about AIDS and 9/11 which I don’t think anyone not already predisposed to dislike Obama thinks he believes, and focus on some of the racial remarks. Now I think it’s fair to say that most of us, whatever they may think about those views (I have more sympathy for them than perhaps most people on this board), aren’t exactly surprised to hear them from a minister from the south side of Chicago.
But some Obama supporters … well, let me start here: among the predictable blog comments - people who wouldn’t support Obama in any event condemning the minister, Obama supporters defending Obama, Clinton supporters shouting “unelectable,” etc., there seem to have been some Obama supporters genuinely shaken up by the remarks. Now, I happen to think Obama is pretty sincere about a lot of his post racial rhetoric (though skeptical that America is quite ready to really put racial issues behind us). But a lot of Obama supporters seem to … how to put this … they not merely want to believe the post racial rhetoric, but they are perhaps a bit … naive … about the real state of race relations in America. Whatever one’s position regarding race in America, there is a heck of a lot of anger out there. And to be surprised that some of Obama’s close associates might share that anger … well, as I said, it seems naive.
Naive or not, I can see it puncturing some people’s cartoon views of what Obama is about. I think he is a lot more complex (for better or worse) than a lot of people want to acknowledge. And I guess it’s possible that some of his supporters may not end up being very comfortable with that.
Incidentally, regarding some of the views expressed by Wright about America’s role in the world - while most of the people on this board would not phrase it quite the way Wright did, I think it’s fair to say that some non-interventionists would like to think that Obama really was influenced to some extent by some of those views.
Whether or not this stuff actually hurts Obama depends entirely on how well Obama handles himself under fire. The better he does, the more likely people are to forgive his association with Wright and give him credit for being able to handle the matter well. So, it’s a test, which is not a bad thing at all. Passing tests is what getting through an election campaign is all about.
(As opposed, say, to getting caught with a hooker, which is the sort of thing that ends campaigns, and careers).
It is natural and appropriate that the majority of the country–a majority that has traditionally set the cultural and civilizational standards of language, education and culture, a majority that created institutions like Harvard– should have substantial control over them, pride in them, and a self-conscious attitude of noblesse oblige with respect to them. It’s also appropriate this majority provides moral leadership to the rest of the society, including the economically and socially less successful class of black Americans. But since it is unusually generous and unusual for a majority to give up the power it naturally holds over a society, this magnanimity should be recognized and applauded and is something someone like Obama should be grateful for.
This is the worst thing about someone like Wright and the dominant language of minority grievance: it completely ignores the striking nature of white America’s efforts to help blacks. It was whites who lost half a million men in a war to end slavery. It was whites who ultimately acquiesced and in many cases fought for civil rights laws, welfare reform, prison reform, etc. And it is only because whites had a just and Christian standard of values that placed a premium on our equality before God that blacks were able to speak a common language and appeal to a common, transcendent standard in fighting against excess and unjust conditions of “white power” such as slavery and Jim Crow. But just because these excesses were indeed excesses, does not mean that the traditional white majority had no virtues and has no right to pride of place and pride of ownership over institutions like Harvard which it generously (and in some cases ridiculously) opens up to underprivileged minorities. It is silly that it is done for folks who can’t really take advantage of the unique academic atmosphere it provides, but, even so, someone like Obama and his wife should be less alienated and more grateful for what the Ivy League has done for both of them in giving them an education in an old institution designed by whites and suffused with high WASP civilization.
Of course, the language of most minority leaders in America has nothing to do with gratitude and justice and everything to do about power. Just by way of example, whites are always worrying about children in Tibet or Darfur or Guatemala and black kids in Compton and Harlem and opening up charities and opportunities in private schools to assist these groups. When has a prominent black leader or black group ever done anything for a cause that wasn’t essentially enlightened self help to advance blacks as a group? In today’s multitcultural America, eveyone can think tribally and as a group concerned with power except whites. And when whites engage in minimal self-defense it is denounced as racism indistinguishable from the genuine racism that lay behind slavery and Jim Crow.
Roach,
I think it’s hard for minority leaders to walk the line between resentment of majority white oppression and subserviance to majority white leadership. Obama is trying to walk that line by being patriotic and grateful to his country, but also aware that his country still has a way to go. He is trying to offer himself as the leader who can best take the country further down that road, not by stoking resentment, but by emphasizing both unity and commonality.
Obama’s relationship with Wright is interesting in that it shows that Obama really can work with, and have love for, people who don’t share all his views. Obama was attracted to Wright’s church because it was trying to approach Christianity without betraying the African roots of the people in the parish. It’s not so much afrocentric as afro-ethnic, the same way that many Catholic Churches are Italian-ethnic, and many Orthodox Churches are Greek or Russian-ethnic, with all the consequent cultural roots and traditions. Obama was attracted to the possibilities and hopes this offered. It didn’t mean that he agreed with all the various notions that came up in the course of the parish’s efforts to work this stuff out. Clearly, he disagreed with quite a few things, but stuck with it because he believes in the central premise and effort to make a Christian Church that is loyal to its own african-based ethnicity. Remember, of course, that Obama’s own father was born in Africa, so it’s not some long-separated nostalgia, but a very real family matter to him.
I think you are partly right that much of the language of some of the more vocal minority leaders in America is about power. And Wright seems infected with that resentment of power himself, at least at times. But certainly it wasn’t the only thing he ever talked about, and these extreme moments depicted on the videos now circulating seem to have been rather rare. The real point is that Obama was willing to work within this church to help evolve past this stuff, rather than to quit in a huff and find something more narcissisticaly reflective of his own views. And it’s clear that he doesn’t share Wright’s political views, nor do a lot of people in his Church. Wright was just a very powerful, charismatic personality without whom the church would not exist, but now that he’s retiring the second generation people who are taking over are, like Obama, far less resentful and alienated, and far more interested in developing in the direction of unity and gratitude - which was always a part of Wright’s approach, even though he could go off into the resentment line at times.
[…] Fine, one more post on the endless Wright controversy. On several occasions, I have argued that there is a double standard being applied in the treatment of Hagee and Wright, but it isn’t the double standard that is being routinely trotted out in recent days. Frank Rich sums up this view: But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick. […]