The Rev. Wright controversy is good for Barack Obama - and America
After long being a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, I decided to vote for Barack Obama last year. From my post.
I am sick and tired of American politics being dominated by a grudge match between the opposite sides of the 1960’s. You can see the two sides huddled in dorm rooms across the hall from each other sometime around 1968. Room 101 has a bunch of privileged blue bloods wishing they were Barry Goldwater, counting the communists in their midst, reading the Bible and listening to Pat Boone. Room 102 across the hall is filled with long-haired freaky people blaring the Beatles from the stereo, everyone high and having sex, burning draft cards in their bongs.
Stereotypical caricature? You bet. Too bad our politics today far more resembles this caricature than the reality. It’s all our discourse has become. And every candidate, both Republican and Democrat, except for Barack, is fighting this battle in every word they utter. Some more than others, true. But every policy position every candidate takes is either meant to win the argument back in the dorm room in 1968, or somehow make themselves look less like the caricature the other side has painted for 40 years.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy is a perfect example of what this ongoing Battle Of The Sixties has done to our discourse. And as I’ve said before, any black man who got this close to the presidency would have to go through this. And defeat it.
Demonizing Rev. Wright is a necessary condition for Hillary Clinton, or John McCain, to win the presidency. It is a weapon in their arsenal of 50%+1 politics. It assumes division, and seeks to exploit it. It assumes that the margin of victory will come from how enraged each side becomes about Rev. Wright, and who best mobilies that division for their own purposes.
While it is necessary for them, it is not a lamentable but necessary manifestation of our democracy. This division just happens to be the current state of our politics. It is what the Hillary/McCain generation has made necessary for their own advancement.
Does anyone think it does America any good to demonize a black preacher? Let alone a black preacher as objectively good and decent and wholly American as Jeremiah Wright? And does anyone believe that any black man’s preacher would escape this demonization, in this state of our discourse, if that black man got as close to the presidency as Barack Obama has?
The Barack Obama campaign has always been about ending this division-based politics. The Rev. Wright controversy is a necessary battle in the effort to defeat the 50-50 status quo that makes small people like Hillary and John McCain appear to be leaders.
For example, Hillary says she’s not divisive. Excuse me, but she’s so divisive, she’s made the 50%+1 strategy turn our own Democratic Party into a caricature of her never ending Battle Of The Sixties. Not only does she put Republicans at our throats, she puts us Democrats at EACH OTHER’s throats. It is purposeful, because it’s the only way she knows how to win. It is not some coincidence. It is her life strategy. It is John McCain’s life strategy.
The Rev. Wright controversy is bad for Hillary, and bad for McCain, because as any military historian will tell you, the bloodiest point in the battle also happens to be the turning point.
Hillary and McCain both know that if Rev. Wright suddenly appears human, and becomes necessarily American, not just in fact but in perception, their politics has died, and with it, their pathetic hopes for the presidency. That’s why the more Rev. Wright speaks out, the better. Yes, it’ll be nerve-wracking. But it’s simply got to happen for Barack Obama to be president. And Obama supporters must take this battle on, fight it, and win it.
My advice for Barack? Stay positive. Don’t play this 50-50 game just because your opponents are playing it - your best weapon is the antithesis of their strategy, and 50-50 is all they can get, ever. It’s as far down as they can take you. And they know it.
And as for Jeremiah Wright…Barack, perhaps at some point, you will need to address this again, in these terms - to take on the status quo that makes it necessary to demonize Rev. Wright, and talk about a new politics beyond this 50-50 paradigm. Because once you defeat that, it’s over. And it will be yet another change you made possible, created, and made America imagine.
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Tags: 1960s, barack obama, hillary clinton, jeremiah wright, john mccain
May 1st, 2008 at 4:39 pm
SOME INSIGHT:
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F.
Kennedy’s challenge to, “Ask not what your Country can do for you, but
What you can do for your Country,” gave up his student deferment, left
College in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.
In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)
The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy’s premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief’s medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery.
For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.
What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated. While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/ sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.
Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the Country?
After leaving the service of his Country, the young African-American finished his final year of College, entered the Seminary, was ordained as a Minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America’s biggest cities.
This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.