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Obama Can't Shake The Wright Controversy

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By MICHAEL BARONE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 4, 2008

Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs.

On the positive side, superdelegates still are breaking his way. Rep. Baron Hill, whose southern Indiana district almost certainly will vote for Hillary Clinton, came out for Obama. So did fellow Hoosier Joe Andrew, who previously endorsed Clinton and who was named Democratic national chairman by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. (James Carville may have another name for him.) Obama is still well ahead among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, and he is not very far behind in superdelegates, either.

But what about the voters? Here there are some ominous signs. The latest Fox News poll, conducted after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club, showed Obama's favorable/unfavorables at 63 to 27 percent among Democrats, compared to Hillary Clinton's 73 to 22 percent.

Suddenly she's not the only one with high negatives. And 36 percent of Democrats say they would be disinclined to vote for Obama because of his longtime relationship with his former pastor. There's more bad news in The Pew Research Center poll of Democrats. Obama's national lead among Democrats is down from 49 to 39 percent to a statistically insignificant 47 to 45 percent.

Obama's long association with a minister who says the federal government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill black people, who likens American soldiers to terrorists, who celebrates Louis Farrakhan as a great man tends to undermine the central theme of Obama's candidacy. Obama has presented himself since his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech as a leader who can unite America across political and racial divides.

He presented himself to American voters, most of whom, I believe, think it would be a very good thing if we elected a black president. (I personally feel that way.)

"In the blue states," Obama told the convention in Boston and the nation watching on TV, "we worship an awesome God." Now it turns out that the God worshipped in the Rev. Wright's church was "awesome" in ways we didn't expect.

A few pundits still are saying that Obama's choice of pastor is a distraction, an irrelevancy. But some voters, perhaps in the belief that a president's judgment and values have important consequences, don't agree.

Michael Barone's column is distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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