Posted by
Andrews on Monday, April 07, 2008 9:24:16 PM
Obama may or may not be charismatic. (
I have come down on the side of "no" in the past.) But one thing I can say with certainty is that Obama
lacks political skill.
I don't know how he ran his campaigns in Chicago. Perhaps he won the seat by being the anointed candidate of the party for his seat. Whatever happened in Illinois, he definitely is not showing nay degree of political skill in this race.
Why do I say that? Because Obama is still a parishioner at Trinity.
Now, I know there would have been some small fallout if he left when the Wright story broke. Some would have accused him of selling out, some would have said his departure was tantamount to admitting something was wrong, but he could have easily smoothed that over with one of his speeches. Nor would the fallout be all that bad. Where were the black militants going to go? To Clinton? Or McCain? He has their votes no matter what. And those who would take his departure as a confession are still convinced something is wrong, so he did nothing to win them over by staying.
Most important, though, whatever the consequences at the time, by leaving he would avoid any future problems.
And we now see what form those future consequences might take. The new pastor who replaced Reverend Wright, rather than adopting the Obama line, and saying that Wright was taken out of context, or claiming that the quotes were cherry picked, has chosen to paint Wright as an angry prophet, speaking truth to power, and sticking it to the man. In short, Obama finds himself at a church every bit as publicly militant as that presided over by Wright. Nor can he claim again that this is an aberration, or that the press is cherry picking quotes. The new minister seems unapologetic in his praise of Wright's most angry speeches.
A better politician would have seen this coming. It should have been obvious Trinity was not going to pick a bland moderate to succeed Wright. A better politician would have cut his losses and run as far as possible form Trinity.
But Obama is not an astute politician.