Barack Obama and the race for the White House

Over the past few months I’ve twice been asked to appear as a pundit on the BBC World Service’s “Have your say” programme dealing with Barack Obama’s bid to become the Democratic Party’s nomination for the White House. In both cases the question of race and its effect on his candidacy was the pivotal point around which the debates revolved.

The timing of the first show coincided with the start of the Democratic primaries, around the time of Senator Hillary Clinton’s epiphany in a New Hampshire coffee shop when the wheels of her campaign appeared to be coming off. Despite her efforts to style the Obama campaign as slick and inexperienced, she was going backwards and fast.

Questions of her throwing in the towel started to surface with campaign managers quitting and even an insert on the Drudge Report that this might well be it. Was it a case of misogyny being worse than racism among American voters? Suddenly and unexpectedly, even to herself, the tears flowed and a stay of execution was granted by the electorate.

Yet despite all this, Obama continued to grow stronger and his appeal to a broad base of Democratic and Independent voters became self evident. The unthinkable became very thinkable — America was sending a strong signal — we are ready to elect our first black president.

Leaving aside that half of his parentage is white, including his cringeworthy granny, Barack Obama had shown that American voters were taking a quantum leap into virgin territory.

Which brings us to the second show, a couple of days ago, where the issue of race took on an entirely new and uglier complexion. Gone was the question of whether Americans would elect a black man and in its place was the issue of whether they would vote for a black man who had supported a radical black pastor who held views which were unpalatable to a sizeable portion of the white American voters.

Let’s take a step back to Obama’s speech on race and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright at Philadelphia which I dealt with in considerable detail at the time.

Not only was it a stunning address, but it dealt with issues in a way which will allow us to reach a greater understanding of the gulf that divides the races. As I said at the time, this speech, regardless of the outcome of the election, will stand the test of time. It truly echoed Nelson Mandela.

Moreover, it was Obama’s James Bond moment. Stirred, but not shaken, he took on all comers and did not abandon Wright.

He displayed incredible resolve and strength of character from a great president in the making.

Before I deal with Wright’s media blitz, which has occasioned severe damage to Obama, I would like to repeat that — a great president in the making. Nothing has changed save that his former pastor has gone to the local nuke dealer and bought some ICBM’s for Hillary Clinton to use against him.

This is unforgivable.

Wright started a weekend media blitz with a Friday night interview by Bill Moyes on PBS and then addressed the National Press Club in Washington on the Monday. He blamed America for 9/11 and said they were capable of releasing Aids to control minorities. He said blacks think with one part of the brain which made them more creative and whites with another, making them more logical. In toto, he gave the Clinton camp enough soundbites to make the claim that Obama, by association, had to be unelectable.

Needless to say, Obama was left with no alternative but to distance himself from Wright.

It is against this backdrop that the second BBC debate was entered.

Two of the pundits went to great lengths to point out the work that Wright had done and the era of segragation within which he grew up. They were at pains to point out that voters would not have reacted the same if it were a white clergyman relating to Clinton or McCain.

My point was this — of course what they are saying is right, but and it is a big, big but, Wright knew of the terrible damage he was occasioning Obama’s campaign.

In addition he knows that a president Obama could achieve enormous credibility, gains and leverage for the African American community, yet he carried on regardless. After all, if Obama can sit in the most powerful seat in the world what can’t an African American do?

Yet despite all this, he elected to go and make the case for Clinton that electing Obama is tantamount to bringing the views of Wright to the White House.

God damn America?

It is irrelevant what Wright has done before and when he grew up, or even the hardship he suffered, when he stands on the brink of setting the African American cause back at least a decade. If he claims to have their interests at heart what possessed him to inflict this act of sabotage? What purpose, other than Clinton’s, did he serve? Everything he said was well known in the media as the feelings of African Americans. Obama offered voters a paradigm shift — that the black versus white take on policy could become one take against those who exploited all Americans for themselves.

Of course it is unfair for Obama to take the rap for Wright. Unfortunately he did, somehow survived and witnessed, in what I can only imagine was horror, as Wright grabbed for the brass ring of public attention again. Can he survive it again? This will fall to the superdelegates and if they are courageous and wise enough to hand him the Democratic baton, the American people as the Republican machinery comes into play.

Just as an aside — if that does come to pass I would pay to see a debate between Pat Robertson and Jeremiah Wright. Bonfire of the insanities?

We all know that the American Constitution provides for a division between church and state. Whether the American voter can make that distinction between Obama and Wright, only time will tell. One thing this election will show us on the issue of race is how far America has come and how far she still has to go.

Let us pray it’s one small step for America and one quantum leap for mankind.