Using Good Judgment Writing about Barack Obama's seeming lack of good judgment and character, Susan Estrich of Fox News asked: "Did he really believe [Jeremiah Wright] to be a better, more decent, more honorable man than he was? Or was he afraid that black voters would be offended by his denunciation of someone who, at least initially, was advertised as a respected figure in the black church? "Barack Obama doesn’t have to convince anyone that he disagrees with what Wright has to say and what he stands for. That’s easy. You can’t have heard a single speech that Obama has given in the last year and make that mistake. "What he has to do, if he is to effectively put this bad chapter to rest, is provide some explanation for why it took him so long and why he seemed to find it so difficult to do to this guy what most of us wanted to do to him the first time we saw a single clip of his hateful rants" The explanation she's asking for is contained in the first paragraph of the quoted material. And I'm not talking about "political expediency," which to me is what she implies by citing afraidness that black voters might take offense. But that very prospect does contain the clue to the answer. I've said many times that I admire Wright and I still do. The incendiary snippets were taken out of the context of legitimate sermons that drew parallels between Biblical stories and episodes in our nation's history that depict the worst side of our government's policies. It is not unpatriotic to talk about your government's past mistakes in hopes of encouraging better policies in the future. Before this week, all Wright was ever guilty of was using incendiary and controversial language in that kind of context. Had Obama acted any sooner to disassociate himself from his pastor, it would have been an act of disloyalty that, to me at least, and I presume to Obama as well, might have been regarded as condemnatory in itself. In other words, Obama would have been regarded by Wright sympathizers as disloyal. The excesses perpetrated by Wright this past week, especially including the accusation that Obama had not meant what he said when he repudiated those earlier offensive proclamations, carried the whole business far enough that not only did Obama HAVE to act as he did, but he was ABLE to act as he did without incurring any significant loss of black support. That's because Wright's extremely bad behavior was offensive to ALL Americans, not just the right-wing extremists who had tried to make political hay with 30-second sound bites. | 
