Father Pfleger in action
Over the weekend, Barack Obama gave his best Roberto Duran "No Más" impersonation and divorced himself from Trinity United Church, however belatedly. The proximate cause was a sermon given at the church last Sunday by his longtime friend, Father Michael Pfleger, in which the Caucasian Catholic priest vividly mocked white people and called America "the greatest sin against God."
Of course, the big question most people will ask is did Obama associate with people like Pfleger and the equally kooky Reverend Wright because he saw in them fellow travelers or did he do so out of political expedience. Personally, I go with the latter. Although I don't care for Obama's politics and consider him unprepared to be president, I believe the reports of virtually everyone who's known him that he's a decent guy. Besides, it's not like Democrats suddenly have developed a monopoly on cozying up to unattractive religious leaders who say bizarre and hateful things.
But if you think I'm rushing to Obama's defense, slow down. I think his little minuet with Trinity United over the past 18 months provides a neat little case study that shows why Obama lacks the personal attributes to be president. For well over a year now, any sensible analysis of the Trinity United affiliation from the Obama campaign's perspective would have concluded that he needed to lance this particular personal boil, the sooner the better. And yet Obama dithered. Rather than act, he offered talk. When he gave his hide-the-ball speech on a national conversation on race, he let the swooning of his acolytes like Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan and Gary Wills convince him that he solved the political problem. Perhaps more than any recent politician, Obama shows an unseemly eagerness to believe the gushing he hears in his customized echo chamber.
If Obama acted decisively on this matter 18 months ago, it wouldn't be a major issue today. And yet he tacked the opposite direction with his racial reconciliation speech:
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way….
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
With these comments, Obama wed himself to Trinity United for the duration of the campaign. For better or for worse. And the whole reason was because he seemingly lacks the capacity for decisive action. He prefers talking to doing. And he prefers ambiguity to clarity. These are not desirable qualities for a President.
