March 30, 2008
Campaign Season 10
Liberal identity politics snares Democrats.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers

These excerpts are taken from this week’s entries on NRO’s The Corner.

Confused

Not to beat a dead horse, but one of the unanswered questions of this campaign still baffles: Obama — faced with an implosion of his candidacy over the racist outbursts of his pastor — chooses not to apologize for, or dissociate himself from, the cause of his present catastrophe, that alone would restore his credibility and perhaps his momentum.

But instead Obama takes the occasion to save himself by giving a far-reaching speech, whose morally equivalent similes (grandmother, Ferraro, Reaganites, talk shows, etc.) and relativism (most don’t understand the protocols of the black church, Wright’s past good outweighs the present bad, etc.) opened up more controversies and are proving as amenable to bad sound bites as were Wright’s slurs.

So why promise to solve the problem, then don’t, but instead create even more problems?

Is it hubris? His inexperience due to a prior sheltered life among sympathetic enablers? Terrible advice and poor staff work? Assurance of the press’s ‘another Gettysburg Address’ treatment and adulation that suggested he can say almost anything and still be deified? Too deep an investment in the Wright church?

Do his handlers grasp that there is a reason (maybe even a connection) why even as a royal Anderson Cooper, the NY Times, or a Chris Matthews gush, his polls among those with pitchforks in places like Pennsylvania tank?

And does Obama realize that the last thing he needs right now is a real conversation on race that would deal by needs with disproportionate illegitimacy, drug usage, crime, the values espoused in rap music, anti-Semitism, and black racism — as well as undeniable long-standing white racial prejudice?

Such an honest discussion might well alienate his base of white elites and African-Americans that is rapidly becoming his only constituency — and is never held not because America is "afraid of talking about race" but because millions don't wish to be demonized as racists for introducing unpleasant realities into the discussion.

Obama's Pandora Box: The Maladies Continue to Fly Out

Did he really want to open the lid off and evoke a national conversation on race, or to suggest the problem might have been just occasional errant remarks by Rev. Wright rather than the ideology of the Trinity church?

Obama should have kept the lid shut by simply apologizing for Wright, severing the relationship, and leaving the church. But suddenly after calling for a national conversation on race, and having a media chorus applaud that opportunity — silence?

And don't expect Obama or his admirers to take up the challenge and continue on this path that leads to exactly where they don't wish to go — revelation of the desire to mandate an equality of result rather than ensure one of opportunity.

So why the post-speech deafening silence? Because Obama and the punditry know that we cannot have such an honest conversation, given that any "new" dialogue 43 years after civil-rights legislation would touch on inordinate crime, illegitimacy, drug use, imprisonment, and black racism in addition to white racism — and thus logically lead to emasculation of the present privileged traffickers in grievance and reparations. Who would wish to put a soothing Obama et al. out of business?

And by Obama remaining in the church, its entire theology and its new pastor Moss (cf. his recent interviews) likewise jump out — and its neo-Marxist philosophy of black liberationism, resentment and anger at whites, and easy anti-Americanism will continue to be problematic for the next would-be President of the United States of America. If elected, would Obama continue to support the Trinity ideology (consider the photo-ops and sound-bites at Sunday service)? And continue to have to explain embarrassing contradictions between what he professed and what he attended and subsidized that inevitably will on occasion lead to "typical white person" lapses?

Rev. Wright may well be the most theatrically unhinged representative of Trinity doctrine, but there is no reason to believe that anything he preached was at odds with either the church's written texts, or the sentiments of his ancillary preachers or his successors. And that problem won't go away. All summer long, "snippets" and "loops" from the church's well-publicized politics and ideology will come out — unless he shuts the lid on the Pandora's box he opened.

Some Half-Minute

"This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down ... into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country."

Doesn't Obama get it? Every time he contextualizes Wright, he loses. Every time Obama impugns the motives of those who worried over the relationship, he loses. Every time Obama suggests that Wright was a healer whose words were misused by those suspect to inflame ("[it] spoke to some of the racial divisions we have") he loses.

Wright's clips indeed did speak to "racial divisions," but by slurring whites, Jews, Italians, the WWII generation, and the United States. Other than radical African-Americans, Central American Marxists, Libyans and the Palestinians, almost every one else was fair game. He was not just "stupid" but cruel and uncouth. He did not misspeak "five or six" times, as did a Ferraro, a McCain, an Obama himself, or a Clinton on various topics, but systematically offered a written and spoken ideology of separatism and venom. And those who believe that are not themselves trying to do what Wright did. Would that Obama spend as much time criticizing Wright as he does the critics of Wright.

The controversy is no longer Wright (whose 20 years of slander and hatred lie like foul verbal IEDs buried deeply amid thousands of words in transcripts and texts, and go off the more the media navigates over them). Nor is the rub just Obama's past comments on Wright or his own landmark speech on race.

No, the problem is Obama's continual need to reply to the latest explosion, and his inability to put the issue behind him by a simple clean break. For the next 30 Sundays, someone in Trinity is either going to push the envelope (last Sunday critics of Wright were "lynchers and crucifiers"), or one of the numerous old mines of the publicity-needy Wright will suddenly go off. (Would it be too much for Obama to communicate to Rev. Moss that for the next seven months, the closely-watched Trinity sermons might stick to universal brotherhood, Christian forgiveness, unity, and healing among all of America's races?)

As someone who wants to see Obama present his agenda, defend and debate it, and let the American people decide whether they are ready for such a change leftward, I hope that some sane person in the Obama campaign can simply end this. They need to call an outsider like Juan Williams or Shelby Steele, who have felt the wrath of the radical African-American community, and understand the complexity and the politics of race as few others do, get their blunt advice, and then sever once and for all the Wright relationship. Otherwise toadies and sycophantic insiders will continue to tell Obama what he wants to hear — and we will get a summer full of "garlic noses" and America as the klan, followed by clarifications like "five or six minutes," "snippets," "loops," and "typical white person."

Are We Lynchers and Crucifiers?

Rev. Moss, the new pastor at Sen. Obama's Trinity Church, likens the media storm over Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American remarks to a lynching and crucifixion; the right Reverend Wright takes the role of the Holy Man that was figuratively put on the cross by the contemporary American Romans, who in Wright’s previous formulation were simply the ancient counterparts of modern-day “whites.”

The Rev. Moss and his congregation fail to see that, being in America, they are fortunately free to preach, listen to, attend, or subsidize all the lunacy that Rev. Wright or his successors or ancillaries can dish out.

The issue, however, for 300 million other Americans who do not attend Trinity, is different, but simple — should we vote for the next President of the United States who, being forewarned, chooses to stick with such a congregation, and of whose sanctification of such venom by the very fact of his weekly presence in, and financial support to, Wright’s ministry, we know very little?

Once the mesmerized reaction to the speech among liberal elites calms down, Obama’s team will grasp the various problems their candidate has created that won’t go away. For the next 30 Sundays until election time, the press will watch and wait to see whether the Obamas attend their normal services at Trinity and what is said; or should they — as this Sunday — not attend, what was said in their absence.

Rev. Moss’s interviews and sermons concerning Wright suggest that he is in complete agreement with his former pastor’s views, and will continue to promulgate them, albeit perhaps with less profanity and slander. And that too will pose a problem for Obama — after just assuring the nation that (a) he finds Wright’s speech “controversial” and some of it “unacceptable”, he will remain loyal to his church that (b) not only finds Wright perfectly acceptable and hardly controversial, but feels America’s reaction to him was a lynching and crucifixion.

To what degree all this causes problems for Obama in the closing primary season, deadlocked with a rival, but wounded, liberal Clinton, will be amplified ten-fold in the general election against McCain. The immediate effect is that every time Obama gets into his stump speech about transcending race, coming together, and shunning the old voices of racial divisiveness, among the clapping and hysteria, there will be a notable hiatus, a pause for a bit, as the audiences, if even for a second or two, suddenly realize that Obama is preaching to the country to do what he himself certainly will not.

"Middle Classism" or "Two Americas"?

Would somebody do the calculus?

Is "the brilliant" (and I do mean brilliant) Rev. Wright's current purported $1.6 million 10,000 sq. ft. mansion (cum elevator and butler's pantry) under construction in a gated Chicago community a better reflection of his hated black "middle classism," or is the Obamas' $1.65 million stately domicile more indicative of Michelle's former lack of pride in America?

Perhaps kindred populist John Edwards of two Americas and 30,000 sq. ft. fame can adjudicate.

Just One Honest Critic

I made a systematic review of commentators on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and the major three networks concerning the Obama speech. And the result was abject depression.

By my count about 90 percent of the African-American studies professors, pastors, and pundits not only defended the Obama two-decade presence and subsidy to the Wright ministry, but, terribile dictu, defended Rev. Wright himself and by a variety of postmodern apologies — many white pastors are extremists (though none cited particular cases of such churchmen focusing on blacks in the way Wright did with whites), the black church has particular mitigating protocols (in a way not true of other genres where racism in sports, radio, and journalism has been rightly condemned), past good trumps present bad (applicable as a defense apparently only in the case of black racism), and there is a context of black liberation theology that makes Wright's sermons logical (all sorts of historical examples of racism, mostly half-a-century to a century old follow). I note that the liberal Juan Williams is as articulate and disinterested as he is critical of Wright's venom and cognizant of Obama political problems.

The result is a depressing echo effect that will only hurt the Obama campaign further. Here's the script: a CNN or Fox airs the infamous Wright tapes, the African-American expert guest then comments and in various ways defends Wright — and the net effect will only evoke further outrage on behalf of the Asian, Hispanic and white viewer, who feels race relations, due to Obama and Wright, have gotten only worse and are in need of a reality check, albeit one the Obama base of African-American activists and white elites would not necessarily welcome.

Obama's surrogates, as a Diogenes, need to find just one honest voice, a single disinterested African-American scholar or pastor or journalist who condemns unequivocally the Wright hatred. Just one.

So far Juan Williams is a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

The Chickens of Identity Politics Come Home to Roost?

Watching the parade of apologists for Rev. Wright’s hatred — “garlic noses”; “KKK of A;” “God Damn America;” “Condamnesia;” the U.S. deserved 9/11; America is no different from al Qaeda; we caused the AIDs virus; Israel is a “dirty word” and sought an Arab and black ethnic bomb, etc. — is, well, depressing. Instead of offering distance from Wright, far too many African-American professors and pastors interviewed on the cable stations the last few nights instead praised his brilliance and inspiration.

At best, there was a feeble ‘you just don’t get it’ about the venting and wink-and-nod culture of the black church. But the net message from the African-American liberal establishment, at least I fear, seems to be something like the following: ‘Wright is not going to offer an apology and we aren’t embarrassed about his ranting, which is not ranting at all, but rather historical and biblical exegesis which we endorse. And the problem is yours, not ours, since we expect exemption — given the history of race in this country — from your so-called norms of public discourse.’

This is what the triangulation of Obama has helped to unleash: most Americans will now doubt the moral authority of the African-American intellectual and religious community not just to question the questionable racial remarks of a Bill Clinton, Ed Rendell, or Geraldine Ferraro, but also the Wright-like crudity of a Don Imus or a Michael Richards. Context is now king.

This disastrous regression in race relations is the natural dividend of liberal identity politics, most recently brought to the fore by the wife of the first “black President”, the first “transracial” black Presidential candidate, and the “prophet” and “healer” Reverend Wright.

Barack Obama is on his way to a McGovern candidacy.

Why Hillary Will Continue

The Democratic solution is far more complicated than one thinks, and no one should write Clinton off yet. If Hillary wins a majority of the remaining states, and some of them by wide margins, and is able to count Florida, it is not at all clear that she will be all that far off in the aggregate vote. And then she will adduce three or four powerful arguments — 1) she has won the large in-play states, 2) she has the greater momentum finishing the primary season, 3) her delegates are predicated more on popular voting, Obama's more the result of caucuses, 4) she may be running stronger against McCain in the majority of polls.

Obama's ace-in-the-hole argument that the super-delegates should not 'steal' the nomination from someone who comes to the convention with the greater delegate count and perhaps total popular vote ( and to do so, would forfeit his supporters in the general election) is balanced by Hillary's supporters' own implied defection should Obama be nominated.

That might be more interesting an argument than one thinks. She might suggest that while Obama's supporters might stay home should she win, hers are more likely to jump to McCain should Obama be nominated and do the nominee much more damage.

Historians are right to suggest that in the past contentious conventions have not stopped candidates from winning in the fall — but we haven't experienced a brokered convention in a long time, and the shock effect on our generation would be considerable.

The audience is watching to see which candidate will implode under the pressure, and either say something untoward or have something serious come out. It's not easy to have every word deconstructed of the many thousands they offer up each day, and the pressure will only grow more intense. Clearly, Obama must get out of the rut of tit-for-tat with Hillary, get back to the 'above it all' 'hope and change' messiah, and reformulate his campaign as a post-racial candidate, both by talking about Obama the candidate and his own views rather than as Obama the African-American. And, if he will not dissassociate from the ticking time-bomb Wright, he must give speeches that de facto implicitly decouple his own views from black liberation theology. His problem is not with whites per se, but with Hispanics, Asians, and working class whites to whom Wright is an anathema and can't be explained away.

Right now it is wise to have kept Wright in seclusion and, for Hillary, to put off as long as possible Bill's mega tax return.

McCain has received a godsend because the Democratic gunslinging shaves off weeks of his campaigning, and with it all sorts of venues in which any candidate can misspeak. So apparently for a month or two more he doesn't have to say anything controversial as long as Clinton and Obama by needs go after one another. In turn, he will have an entire data base of talking points that some of the best minds in Democratic politics have conjured up against Clinton or Obama.

It is not just that Democrats are spending millions that otherwise would have been unleashed on McCain, but rather spending millions for McCain. In that regard, the multimillions that the two candidates are raising are not as telling as one thinks, since far more importantly, it is only how they are spent that matters.