Obama's Tactical Error Vis a Vis Wright

I have heard several analysts assign the drip label to the Wright fiasco. I think that this story will have elements of the drip factor for Obama. The drip factor is of course when a story continues to leak out more and more negative details so that the culmination of all the details destroys the candidate. At this point, the shock of what Reverend Wright said has done its initial damage. What the campaign desperately needs is to move away from this story.

That is why I think that Obama has made two critical errors with regards to this story. First, the campaign continues to insist that the media took a few isolated comments and turned them into a thirty second loop. Reverend Wright has been preaching regularly for more than thirty years the campaign likes to say. By framing things this way, it makes every newly discovered incendiary statement news. That's because the more comments that surface the worse that makes the campaign's position. Furthermore, he continues to insist that he knew nothing about Wright's most extreme comments. Of course, this opens the door for video and other footage that shows that Obama was at one of these sermons. Furthermore, if enough incendiary comments surface it will also make that arguement hard to believe.

So, for instance, the relatively obscure web site, CNS News, broker a story about some more incendiary comments by Pastor Wright in the magazine his church publishes, The Trumpet.

He refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others. The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God."

Every issue of the magazine published last year included Wright's column, "The Message," in which he covered a range of subjects, including his views on other African-American churches as expressed in his April 2007 commentary "Facing the Rising Sun."

"In a world that is controlled by white supremacy, in a country that is on its way to hell in a hand basket because of lying politicians, in a culture that still thinks 'white is right' and with young people who do not have a clue as to our story, our history, our legacy or our destiny, we still have African-American Christians who are more concerned about 'bling bling' than about freeing our minds," Wright wrote.

This story would have much less relevance if not for Obama's insistence that Wright's words were taken out of context and that he hadn't heard his most incendiary language until just recently. Now, every controversial comment by Wright will be dissected somewhere in the media. (even if most of it will be dissected in the conservative media) This puts the Obama campaign in the position of walking on eggshells.

Meanwhile, his political opponents will begin scouring for more incendiary comments from Wright. It apparently isn't going to be too difficult to find them. The initial sermons were found on a DVD the church itself put out. These latest comments were from the church's own magazine. On the church's web site, they once posted a manifesto from Hamas. The evidence of Wright's anti Americanism and incendiary language is frankly everywhere. By framing the debate as his campaign has, it will open the door for all of it being news.