Obama's lemons into lemonade
Dave McNeely

Contact McNeely at dmcneely@austin. rr.com or (512) 458-2963.

Barack Obama took what appeared to be a problem for his presidential campaign and turned it into an asset, that underlines his reasons for seeking office in the first place.

Even as Obama's competition for Democratic presidential delegates with Hillary Clinton continued unabated, new attention to inflammatory remarks by his former preacher had taken over front chair on the news shows.

Rather than lay low and hope the controversy would go away, and simply distance himself from the re-broadcast speech from several years ago by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama seized the opportunity to talk about the nation's racial divide. He reiterated his call for Americans to join together to fight their problems, rather than fight each other.

In a speech Tuesday in Philadelphia, Obama harkened back to the writing of the U.S. Constitution in that city 221 years ago. What to do about race was a big issue at the time, Obama said, and the resulting document was "stained by this nation's original sin of slavery."

His principal reason for running, Obama said, is "because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."

Wright, in a 2003 sermon, had blamed the United States government for many of the nation's ills:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God d--- America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," Wright said. "God d--- America for treating our citizens as less than human. God d--- America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Obama rejected and condemned Wright's remarks, saying they "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America. . . "

But Obama refused to reject Wright - a former marine who performed Obama's wedding, baptized his children, and whose phrase "the audacity of hope" Obama borrowed for a book title -- as a person.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street. . . . "

It is rather time, Obama said, to work at ending the "racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years." To do so "requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

"In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. . . . Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. . . .

"I would not be running for President," Obama said, "if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country."

Now, the question is whether that message will resonate enough to win not just the nomination, but the presidency.