Obama wasn’t fazed by Jeremiah Wright’s "God Damn America" or his accusation that the U.S. government invented AIDS to wipe out blacks. He couldn’t disown him when the videos came out, but then when the good reverend repeated these accusations at the National Press Club, and then went on to say that Obama, who said he had never heard any of that stuff in his 20 years in the pews, was just another politician who said what he had to and did what politicians do, well, that was too much for Obama. Time for the reverend to go under the bus with his "typical white person" grandmother.
What was different this second go-round? Obama made it clear -- It's all about me:
‘[A]t a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me. It's a -- it is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign.’
In his coronation oration in St. Paul after inching over the finish line (while getting clobbered in North Dakota) with just enough delegates to wrest the Democratic nomination from Senator Clinton, Obama accused John McCain of being just like Jeremiah Wright, showing disrespect for him. That was just too, too much. Obama intoned:
‘In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine.’
Senator McCain's "many accomplishments" of course include military service and martial sacrifice beyond the understanding of most of us. If it is possible to give something beyond the last full measure of devotion, McCain gave it on behalf of the United States over five-and-a-half years in North Vietnamese hellholes. I'm not aware of Senator McCain ever declining to acknowledge Obama's "many accomplishments," but he might be well served by expressly acknowledging them in his stump speech:Senator Obama, I honor your work in the private sector for a year or two after you graduated from college, and I honor your work for three years as a community organizer in Chicago. I understand that as a community organizer you pressured city authorities to remove asbestos from the Altgeld Gardens apartments in 1986 with at least partial success. When the on-site manager of the apartments didn't take action, you nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated "a victory of sorts," you said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings, even if the project gradually ran out of steam and money and even if some tenants still have asbestos in their homes, according to current resident Linda Randle, who worked with you in the '86 anti-asbestos campaign. When you chose to quit organizing the South Side of Chicago after three years, your good deeds did not stop. You rendered valiant service by attending Harvard Law School and winning your first election as the president of the Harvard Law Review. Your service to the Harvard Law Review did not bring an end to your remarkable benefactions. You returned to Chicago, where you won election to the Illinois state legislature before the triumph that brought you to the Senate for the past three-and-a-half years. We all know your accomplishments in the Senate. And last, but far from least, I honor your authorship of Dreams From My Father, a memoir that has spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. You, sir, have served our country with uncommon distinction.
No sense getting Obama upset.
