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I watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright's speech and Q & A at the National Press Club Monday, and--no surprise--he's the same man as the one who was allegedly misrepresented in TV "sound bites." Many of us on the Republican side have been broad minded about the Obama candidacy because we, no less than our Democratic friends, would like to see the racial issue laid to rest, at least insofar as electing Presidents is concerned. It was a milestone for Kennedy in 1960 (although no Roman Catholic has been elected since--48 years). As to Wright, his church does many good works, although the website, no less than Wright, makes it clear that race trumps citizenship as far as ultimate loyalty goes. Wright himself is arrogant, overbearing and rude.

A caller to Michael Medved's talk show made the point that Rev. Wright pleads for racial harmony, and indeed I heard him say some words to that effect. But there is no excuse for a man in public life to give vent to rage, resentment, vitriol and so on in the same speech! I notice that he tried to construe the criticism of his remarks as an attack on the black church as a whole, which is obviously an attempt to discredit the criticisms as merely racist, and certainly ignorant. I have attended a few black churches and felt like an outsider, of course, but I didn't feel singled out as an ignorant or bigoted honky, which is what Wright invariably maintains.

Wright's attacks on the United States are particularly loathsome, not only because they are unfair but because they fail to distinguish between America's principles and America's behavior. The Declaration provides a standard and the Constitution provides a framework for both our government and our way of life. At his best, Martin Luther King Jr. made that distinction, although he came close to undermining his own position by identifying America with a "white power structure" that by his own strictures (assuming the characterization was fair, which it wasn't always) is accountable to the standard and the framework. In other words, America is always capable of improvement because it is based on foundations that require striving for equal justice for all. That is America, not the racist bullies that brutalized or lynched black people. America was the first country in the history of the world which held its citizens to a standard higher than simply the interests of the ruling class.

And that right brain/left brain nonsense! Present-day rationalizations for black educational failures remind me of old southern laws and customs that regarded "one drop of black blood" as evidence that a person was a negro (and therefore legitimately subject to abuse), despite all visual or other appearances to the contrary. This is the essence of so-called affirmative action, which simply reverses the positions of oppressed and oppressor rather than governing by equal justice. The fact that his audience should cheer Wright's bigotry shows just how much damage has been done by reverse discrimination, not to mention by laying the guilt trip on millions of innocent Americans who do not countenance injustice toward blacks. More generally, it shows that injustices are not easily forgotten. Yet men like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, not to mention Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas and a multitude of others managed to "move on." Of course, for liberals and liberal blacks, the only thing worse than a conservative is a black conservative, as Clarence Thomas knows very well when he is the target of censorship and boycotts when he gets invited to speak.

It is clear that that there were political advantages in Chicago for Obama in joining Rev. Wright's church, but Obama's reluctance to jettison Wright shows that he is violating the Peter Principle, which is rising only to your level of incompetence. He is having great difficulty adapting to a much larger constituency than Chicago or Illinois. He had a weak Senate opponent, and he may not be so fortunate the next time he runs, assuming he fails as a presidential candidate. I reject Obama's claim that Bill Ayers is a casual acquaintance, who after all has not repudiated his violent past, having said that he regrets not doing more damage! Liberals tend to be blind to extremists on the left, particularly if they are themselves extremists, as Obama, despite his soothing and even soaring rhetoric, clearly is. He has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and while in the Illinois State Senate he refused to vote for a bill that declared that a child outside the womb ("Born Alive Act") was a human being.

It's perhaps too early to conclude that Obama is damaged goods, but if I were Hillary Clinton, I would be very much encouraged!