Obama and the Reverend Wright

From a 2007 profile of Barack Obama in Rolling Stone:

The Trinity United Church of Christ, the church that Barack Obama attends in Chicago, is at once vast and unprepossessing, a big structure a couple of blocks from the projects, in the long open sore of a ghetto on the city's far South Side. The church is a leftover vision from the Sixties of what a black nationalist future might look like. There's the testifying fervor of the black church, the Afrocentric Bible readings, even the odd dashiki. And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."

Obama has now spent two years in the Senate and written two books about himself, both remarkably frank: There is a desire to own his story, to be both his own Boswell and his own investigative reporter. When you read his autobiography, the surprising thing — for such a measured politician — is the depth of radical feeling that seeps through, the amount of Jeremiah Wright that's packed in there. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising. Obama's life story is a splicing of two different roles, and two different ways of thinking about America's. One is that of the consummate insider, someone who has been raised believing that he will help to lead America, who believes in this country's capacity for acts of outstanding virtue. The other is that of a black man who feels very deeply that this country's exercise of its great inherited wealth and power has been grossly unjust. This tension runs through his life; Obama is at once an insider and an outsider, a bomb thrower and the class president. "I'm somebody who believes in this country and its institutions," he tells me. "But I often think they're broken."

It seems to me that the Reverend Wright is still stuck in the early 1960s, to say the least, and refuses to see the many positive strides the United States has made in race relations. It's not all good, not by a long shot, but Wright makes the typical radical mistake of dismissing the good because it's not perfect.

News flash: this nation is never going to be perfect. The Founders wanted us to strive for a "more perfect union," by which they meant that for all the essential flaws of our humanity we should never stop trying to make a better nation. And so it has been: two steps forward, one step back.

The above article alone should put to rest the facile lie Obama has told, and most have accepted, that the ravings we heard from Reverend Wright this past spring were new or unacceptable to Obama. They were the very bread and butter of the Trinity Church, and for better or worse what drew him to that church in the first place.

Here's the full, in-context speech of the Reverend Wright, put on YouTube by the Trinity United Church itself (warning, it's nearly 7 minutes long, but worth watching):



And, Senator Obama's first (37 minutes long!) response, when he refused to disavow Wright and compared Wright's racism to his white grandmother's, without making the obvious point that she, at least, did not preach said racism to a crowd of 5,000 strong each and every Sunday:



Draw your own conclusions.

Hat Tip: Victor Hanson, whose writing pointed me to the Rolling Stone article.

More on the Chicago Machine

According to David Freddoso in the Wall Street Journal, it seems that Senator Obama had a chance to back a bipartisan reform effort in Cook County in Illinois, and chose instead to vote for a Chicago political machine hack who was well known as corrupt:

In the 2006 election, reformers from both parties attempted to end the corruption in Chicago's Cook County government. They probably would have succeeded, too, had Mr. Obama taken their side. Liberals and conservatives came together and nearly ousted Cook County Board President John Stroger, the machine boss whom court papers credibly accuse of illegally using the county payroll to maintain his own standing army of political cronies, contributors and campaigners.

The since-deceased Stroger's self-serving mismanagement of county government is still the subject of federal investigations and arbitration claims. Stroger was known for trying repeatedly to raise taxes to fund his political machine, even as basic government services were neglected in favor of high-paying county jobs for his political soldiers.

When liberals and conservatives worked together to clean up Cook County's government, they were displaying precisely the postpartisan interest in the common good that Mr. Obama extols today. And Mr. Obama, by working against them, helped keep Chicago politics dirty. He refused to endorse the progressive reformer, Forrest Claypool, who came within seven points of defeating Stroger in the primary.

After the primary, when Stroger's son Todd replaced him on the ballot under controversial circumstances, a good-government Republican named Tony Peraica attracted the same kind of bipartisan support from reformers in the November election. But Mr. Obama endorsed the young heir to the machine, calling him -- to the absolute horror of Chicago liberals -- a "good, progressive Democrat."

Mayor Richard M. Daley -- who would receive Mr. Obama's endorsement in 2007 shortly after several of his top aides and appointees had received prison sentences for their corrupt operation of Chicago's city government -- was invested in the Stroger machine's survival. So was every alderman and county commissioner who uses the county payroll to support political hangers-on. So was Mr. Obama's friend and donor, Tony Rezko, who is now in federal prison awaiting sentencing after being convicted in June of 16 felony corruption charges. Rezko had served as John Stroger's finance chairman and raised $150,000 for him (Stroger put Rezko's wife on the county payroll).

Once again, we see the central role of Obama's money man Tony Rezko, who is one of the bagmen for the Chicago Machine.

Don't just take the Wall Street Journal's word for it though. Far closer to home, the Chicago Tribune had this to say about Obama's endorsement of Todd Stroger back in 2006:

...Obama has come too far as an inspiring new breed of politician on the national scene to muck around in local politics, endorsing machine hack candidates and substituting party for principle. Or so you'd imagine.

There were warning signs: Obama's first dubious endorsement of a lightweight came during the primary season when he cut TV ads plumping for Alexi Giannoulias, then 29, the vice president of his family's bank who decided he'd like to be state treasurer. The endorsement was widely seen as key to Giannoulias' primary victory.

Obama was upfront about why he got involved: Members of the Giannoulias family were early and strong backers of his U.S. Senate campaign and "I think it's important to reciprocate," he told a reporter.

But Obama did not reciprocate for Forrest Claypool.

Claypool was the overwhelming favorite of reform-minded Democrats in his race against incumbent John Stroger (Todd's father) and had headed Obama's transition team after Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004.

Old-guard candidate John Stroger, meanwhile, had endorsed Comptroller Dan Hynes instead of Obama in the Democratic Senate primary.

When Obama decided not to endorse either candidate, his spokesman intoned, "The senator believes that the voters should make up their own minds in this race."

As you know, then, John Stroger suffered a stroke, won the primary and retired for health reasons. The Democratic Central Committee thumbed its nose at critics and selected Todd Stroger to take his place on the ballot, rejecting more senior, qualified candidates such as U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago and veteran county Commissioner Bobbie Steele.

The stench of same-old-same-old from John Stroger's years of cronyism and bloat hung over the process, and Obama had every excuse to distance himself from it.

Instead came this letter--a body blow to Claypool Democrats and the idealists whose fantasy about Obama is that he will transcend the grubby machinations and tawdry favor-swapping of party politics--followed by word from Obama's office that he will appear on stage at a pro-Stroger rally Monday night.

So, let's count the largely unchallenged statements Obama repeatedly makes about himself that this story simply destroys, shall we?

1. Obama represents a new politics. Reality: No, actually, he represents the oldest politics around, the big-city political machine. When given the opportunity to choose his reformist ally, Forrest Claypool, over a dirty Machine politician who previously endorsed Obama's rival, he undermined the reformer by failing to endorse either candidate. When John Stroger retired, Obama further chose to endorse Stroger's son Todd over more experienced and reform-oriented alternatives.

2. Obama represents a new bipartisan spirit, rising above petty divisions. Reality: At the last, given a chance to support a reformist Republican over Todd Stroger, Obama again chose Todd Stroger. Three strikes, you're out.

This is just his record in Chicago, but it exemplifies how Obama's rhetoric is completely disconnected from the actual reality of how he does things. And it is the poor of Chicago who suffer most from this corrupt brand of politics. "Stroger was known for trying repeatedly to raise taxes to fund his political machine, even as basic government services were neglected in favor of high-paying county jobs for his political soldiers."

Do you think the rich of Chicago were hurt by Stroger's neglect of basic services, or the poor?

Obama and the Teamsters

I missed this back in May when it occurred, but according to CBS News and the New Republic Senator Obama struck a deal to end the federal Independent Review Board created in 1989 to curb Teamsters' corruption:

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that last summer, Illinois Senator Barack Obama told officials in the Teamsters union that he favored ending the Independent Review Board (IRB) that was created in 1989 by the federal government to rid the union of organized crime. Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama, confirmed the story, saying that the candidate believed that the IRB had "run its course" because "organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined." The Teamsters subsequently endorsed Obama for president, in late February.

Obama and the Teamsters bristled at suggestions that any deal was made. The Obama campaign also circulated a tape of a speech that Senator Hillary Clinton made last March to the Teamsters saying "at some point the past has to be opened," but Clinton's statement, like those made by Senator John Kerry in 2004, stopped well short of committing her to end oversight of the Teamsters. Based on the statements the newspaper quoted, it is fair to assume that The Wall Street Journal got the details right.

There are two reasons to be concerned about Obama's actions here. The first is procedural. Obama's promise to close down the IRB suggests a Bush-like contempt for the customary relationship between government and the judicial process. The president himself can't shut down the IRB. He can only recommend to his attorney general that he recommend to the U.S. Attorney in New York that it be shut down. But in these kind of touchy matters, presidents usually defer to the judgment of their attorney generals. By coming close to promising a shutdown, Obama was putting politics above judicial procedure - which is just the kind of "Washington" behavior that he likes to criticize his opponents for doing.

The second reason for concern is more substantive. Labor leaders have made plausible arguments for shutting down the IRB, but a Chicago politician should be extremely wary of acceding to them. If there is continuing mob influence in the Teamsters, it is probably centered in the Chicago area. And in the last decade, the Teamsters in Chicago have shown little enthusiasm for rooting out corruption in their ranks. As a veteran Chicago politician surrounded by a veteran Chicago campaign staff, Obama had to have known this - and that makes his warm words to the Teamsters all the more disturbing.

Once again, Obama goes where other Democratic politicians dare not go in explicitly committing himself to ending corruption oversight in exchange for union support. This is Chicago politics, but it's not remotely reformist politics.