Obama at oratorical best, but Wright saga still not over

Barack Obama continues to insist he is not naive. This indeed is what many fear as they hesitate about whether to vote for the Democratic presidential hopeful. He is certainly a liberal candidate, his advisors assert, but far from a dangerously naive one - in connection to the Middle East, and also regarding the fateful question of his skin color.

On Tuesday, for the first time, the Democratic presidential hopeful spoke about this at relative length - a late, although apparently unavoidable, product of the "Wright affair."

The harsh remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the minister to whose church Obama belongs, continue to haunt the Illinois senator. Obama spoke in Philadelphia on Tuesday at the height of his rhetorical prowess, while walking on eggshells: "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community."

He disagrees with the minister's opinions, but cannot spurn a man who has accompanied him for many years. "I have never," he said "been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle."

Some three weeks ago, at an event on the eve of his defeat to Hillary Clinton in the Ohio elections, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer climbed onto the speeding Obama bandwagon and became his supporter and advisor.

Quite a busy man, with his new book "Negotiating Arab-Israeli peace" out in stores, the former envoy is a sort of a decoder for Obama's future intentions toward our region. Kurtzer is a statesman accustomed to the serious discussion of problems in the Middle East, not in political altercations.

On Monday, however, when he represented Obama before a Jewish audience -at an assembly of the United Jewish Communities (UJC) young leaders group - Kurtzer found himself embroiled in just such an altercation.

While the Middle East and Israel were up for discussion, the former envoy was diverted by the audience to other pressing issues on the agenda. One of these, for example, was the exposure of the extreme language that Wright has used, which brought the Obama campaign its most severe crisis to date. As such, this certainly has a special meaning in front of a Jewish audience. Wright spoke against America, and against Israel.

The objects of the minister's esteem also undoubtedly would not be received well by this crowd: Louis Farrakhan, an open American anti-Semite, and the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. In any event, the "Wright crisis" is no longer just a crisis in relations between Obama and the Jewish community. The whole of America is reflecting today on the ties between the candidate and his spiritual leader.

And Kurtzer is stuck in the middle. He reminds the audience that Obama has already spoken, and already announced that he does not agree with Wright. He also mentions that this is not the first affair, nor the first slur.

Kurtzer also told the audience that there are "nagging doubts, there are e-mails, there are innuendos: These are the kinds of things which we [Jewish-Americans] as a community have suffered over the years at the hands of anti-Semites." By doing so, Kurtzer is attempting to characterize Obama as a victim, not an aggressor.

This claim is backed perhaps by a few previous incidents, but not in this instance. In the Wright affair, Obama is in real trouble. This is the reason for Tuesday's Philadelphia speech - an address whose main subject was the race question, but part of which also directly relating to his observers in the Middle East.

Obama described, in an enrapturing manner, Wright's position as expressing "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; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

This was a hard week for the candidate, although his campaign staff hopes that the storm will pass. Such is the nature of campaigns - today's drama is quickly replaced by that of tomorrow. If Obama is lucky, this will be an affair relating to his rival Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was represented at the UJC assembly by her senior advisor Ann Lewis. Republican John McCain also had a representative: former U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger. In their appearances, the trio reflected each candidates' abilities wonderfully, almost as if they had been coordinated beforehand.

Kurtzer was quiet and pensive, at times disconnected, or it at least appeared so. Lewis was methodical, mechanical, and to the point; although uninspiring and frugal with her use of humor. Eagleburger was lively, short-tempered and scathing. He branded the Christian right-wing of his party as a serious problem. Speaking of the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq, to which he contributed, the former secretary of state said he made a mistake.

It may be that the mistake was in fact McCain's. A presidential campaign needs to be safeguarded from the way in which Eagleburger's tongue wags. If one needs evidence for the problems these spokespeople are liable to cause, Obama himself has provided that. Over past fortnight he has been forced to distance from his campaign Samantha Power, a close friend and important advisor. Now he is preoccupied with Wright's remarks.

One can feel a degree of sympathy in both instances, for in both Obama was forced to distance himself from people who had a real influence on him. And in both instances the brutal superficiality of the election system has been forced on complex human situations.

In one incident, Power did indeed speak "off the record," even if the newspaper was technically correct in publishing her comments. In the second incident she simply told the truth, that Obama can promise to leave Iraq - but may not necessarily keep that promise.

The case of Wright is also not clear and simple, as Obama attempted to explain on Tuesday. The extent to which he succeeded in doing so will be clear when the dust settles.

It is possible that Obama made a mistake by maintaining contact with Wright. But this is a mistake that clearly stems from Obama considering short-term political advantages, disadvantages and reservations over some of the pastor's positions against his esteem, loyalty, long person connection and social obligations to the man.

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