Tuesday, April 29, 2008

With Friends Like This . . . .

It's hard not to sympathize with Barack Obama, even for those of us who completely disagree with his left-wing politics.

Consider his dilemma.

Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for twenty years and a leader in the Black Liberation Theology movement, has finally revealed himself as a loony, self aggrandizing, egomaniacal racist and divider. One need only watch Wright's recent exercises in self promotion at the National Press Club, at the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, and on Bill Moyers' PBS program to realize all the hullabaloo is not about Barack Obama, or helping African-Americans, it's about Jeremiah Wright getting the very most out of his fifteen minutes of fame.

Obama, though he still is the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, is virtually crippled now in his efforts to win the general election.

He must either completely denounce the pompous and grandiose Wright and all he stands for now, or he must acknowledge that he listened to Wright's lunacies for twenty years and that not only did it not register then that Wright's philosophy was completely contrary to his own stated purpose of uniting rather than dividing, it doesn't matter now that he tolerated--even embraced--such divisiveness for twenty years.

Hillary Clinton is enjoying Obama's dilemma. Even if she loses the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama's likely poor showing in the 2008 General Election will set her up to claim the nomination in 2012.

And John McCain is listening to the ghostly advice of Lee Atwater, which I paraphrase as follows:

"If your opponent is in the process of destroying himself, don't interrupt the process !"