Melanie: That McCain accepted Hagee’s endorsement shows that he has a sleazy and opportunistic side to him, like all politicians. If McCain had sat in Hagee’s church for twenty years right up to the present day, had had the man marry him and his wife and baptize his children and had taken said children to Hagee’s church with him, had called Hagee his “spiritual mentor” and had written a book inspired by and titled with a phrase taken from one of his sermons, *that* might be a different story (although given that this electoral season I’m voting for “whoever is willing to be responsible when it comes to the GWOT,” maybe not).
I don’t hate Obama. I feel sorry for him a bit. The poor guy has obviously spent most of his life living in rarefied circles where these kind of associations (Ayers, Wright) don’t raise eyebrows and are pretty much accepted. He seems to have no feel at all for the rest of America and no clue how the attitudes of his circle look to everyone else (cf. his “bitterly clinging to guns and religion” remark about Pennsylvania), and he never should have thought about running for president before at least *trying* to get to know them.
I honestly don’t think this new Wright thing is a ploy–if it were, I think he would have responded to it a lot more aggressively and deftly. His initial tepid response sounds like a man hoping this whole thing will just go away, and his followup “The Wright I saw yesterday is not the man I knew twenty years ago” just rings thunderingly false (Why, he had no idea! He’s shocked, *shocked,* I tell you!) It’s not likely to hurt him much with the true believers but it also won’t help him much with anyone else.
It’s a shame because Obama is clearly an orator (possibly even an embryonic statesman) of tremendous natural talent and charisma, and he seems like a genuinely nice, if somewhat clueless, guy in person, although absolutely lacking in judgement. The thing is, though, he just doesn’t have the experience to run at this level, and it’s showing. (The phrase “smart but not wise” comes to mind.) He also has no idea how to manage the press, especially against the Clintons, who are campaigners par excellence. Maybe in another couple of electoral cycles, he would have been ready, but now it’s just way too soon and it’s killing him.
