Obama's Minister Keeps Raising Questions

Lanny Davis was a special counsel to President Clinton. He's candid about his support for Hillary Clinton in this year's Democratic presidential nomination campaign.

But, with his eye trained on the general election campaign, he's also candid about his misgivings about Barack Obama's relationship with his former pastor. And the negative impact it could have on Democrats' hopes for recapturing the White House in November.

After observing that Newsweek's Joe Klein chastised him on CNN for "spreading poison" when Davis raised legitimate concerns about Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he is blunt about the staying power of these questions.

"Attacking the motives of those who feel this discomfort about Senator Obama's response or nonresponse to Reverend Wright's comments is not just unfair and wrong," Davis writes in the Wall Street Journal. "It also misses the important electoral point about winning the general election in November: This issue is not going away. If many loyal, progressive Democrats remain troubled by this issue, then there must be even more unease among key swing voters -- soft 'Reagan Democrats,' independents and moderate Republicans -- who will decide the 2008 election."

Temporarily, Obama's problems with his minister have taken a backseat to his comments about blue-collar Americans who are "bitter" about economic hardship.

James Romoser writes, in the Winston-Salem Journal, that "Obama stopped short of a direct apology, saying only that he regrets any offense caused by his choice of words" when he was questioned by the newspaper about his comments about "bitter" blue-collar voters clinging to guns and religion.

Word choices are critical in presidential campaigns, and, as I suggested in this blog yesterday, words really are all that voters have to assess Obama's claim to have the best judgment to be president. He's been in the U.S. Senate for three years. His record isn't very extensive.

In the absence of a record that demonstrates his actual deeds, all we have are his words. And, for that matter, his actual deeds indicate no disagreement with his minister in the past -- except for his claim that he would have left the church if Wright had not retired.

But that's an easy claim to make. It's hardly likely that Wright will return to the pulpit full time to make Obama prove the validity of his words.

Whether fairly or unfairly, there are times when Obama's campaign reminds me of Jimmy Carter's race for the presidency in 1976.

Like a bolt of lightning from out of the blue, Carter won numerous primaries in 1976, eliminating both George Wallace and Hubert Humphrey as presidential contenders, once and for all, and establishing himself as the choice of voters in Democratic primaries.

But he insisted on making problems for himself with his choice of words, right up until the election. And, while many people believe Gerald Ford cost himself the election by pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974, it may well be that what really cost Ford a full four-year term in the White House was his assertion, in the second presidential debate, that there was "no Soviet domination" of Eastern Europe -- when clearly there was.

At the time of the "Eastern Europe" gaffe, the momentum had been with Ford. But the remark took on a life of its own and halted whatever momentum Ford had.

Even so, when the votes were counted on Election Day, it turned out that a shift of only about 25,000 votes in Ohio and Wisconsin could have reversed the outcome in Ford's favor.

And, even as president, Carter ran into problems with his word choices. Sometimes, the word choices weren't even his -- but he got stuck with them, anyway. The infamous malaise speech in the summer of 1979 never mentioned that word, but Carter's critics used the word incessantly.

Like a Siamese twin, "malaise" became permanently attached to Carter's presidency.

That kind of thing happens in other areas, not just presidential campaigns. The word "rapture," for example, never appears in the Book of Revelation, yet it has become linked to the stories of the End of Days -- and, without it, the authors of the "Left Behind" series of books would have had no story to tell.

But I digress.

Issues have lives of their own, and mortals often seem powerless to control them. Sometimes, issues that one may think will be around for awhile will actually disappear quite quickly on their own.

And sometimes, issues that seem destined to disappear turn out to be resilient -- and long-lived.

Not convinced? Read Fred Barnes' column in the Weekly Standard.

To bring you up to speed, John McCain and his allies have been demanding that Obama apologize for remarks that were made by Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia about McCain's experiences in Vietnam.

Rockefeller happens to be a supporter of Obama. He is not a spokesman for Obama.

"Of course the whole thing was largely playacting -- in other words, political theater," says Barnes. "Sure, Rockefeller's attack was nasty, unfair, and over the top. So what? McCain has heard much worse. He certainly did during his 2000 presidential bid. He did when he championed immigration reform. He's no stranger to the nasty, unfair, and over-the-top side of politics."

But, as Barnes goes on to point out, "2008 is different and not just for McCain. Peter Baker of the Washington Post has aptly dubbed it the 'Year of Taking Offense.' It's mostly fake. Candidates and their minions pretend to be offended by some sharp attack by an opponent. And the opponent or a campaign flunky pretends to be sorry."

Obama is, essentially, a novice in national politics. People who have been around national politics much longer than he has have been thwarted in their efforts to determine which issues can be fatal if not addressed satisfactorily -- and immediately.

The issue of Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright is more significant than some people -- mostly on Obama's side -- have indicated.

And Davis generously tries to save Obama and his campaign staff some anxiety on this issue.

"One thing is for sure," Davis writes. "If Mr. Obama doesn't show a willingness to try to answer all the questions now, John McCain and the Republican attack machine will not waste a minute pressuring him to do so if he is the Democratic Party's choice in the fall. But by then, it may be too late."

Davis has certainly had some experience in dealing with the "Republican attack machine."

Obama would be well advised to pay attention to what he has to say.