Sunday, March 30th 2008, 4:00 AM
For millions of Americans, the major attraction to Barack Obama is
his call for national unity, a summoning to our shared values and
common interests. With his charismatic eloquence, this inspirational
ideal has single-handedly made him a political phenomenon and the
Democratic front-runner.
But Obama's unity appeal, it turns out, has a weak link, one that is
dangerous in a President. For revealing it, we can thank the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright or, more precisely, Obama's tepid reaction to the
outlandish, anti-American things Wright has said. The more he talks
about Wright, the more troubling Obama's approach becomes. In a word,
he is guilty of appeasement.
In a private context, his stubborn loyalty to his longtime pastor
might be admirable. But as someone seeking the presidency, Obama has
flunked a critical test of national leadership. By continuing to
defend Wright even as he criticizes some of his remarks
as "offensive" and "stupid," Obama refuses to draw the important
value and factual distinctions a President must draw in a crisis. At
heart, his is a "peace at any price" approach that has no business in
the Oval Office.
Consider, for example, that Obama, alone among all major candidates
this year, said he would meet our enemies without conditions,
including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. If his approach to Wright were
applied, Obama would emerge from that meeting by condemning
Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map while also condemning
American and Israeli policies. This moral equivalency would be tacit
support for Iran's warped grievances, and perhaps for its nuclear
program.
After all, we have nuclear weapons and so does Israel, so who are we
to deny Iran? Or, as Obama put it Friday when talking about race
relations, "People all want the same thing."
They don't, but appeasement thinking often credits everybody with
equally good and worthy intentions. That was the mistake of the most
infamous appeaser of modern times, Neville Chamberlain, the British
prime minister who, with France's help, gave in to Adolf Hitler in
hopes of heading off war. In exchange for sacrificing innocent Czechs
and others living on lands Hitler wanted, Chamberlain famously waved
a treaty with Hitler's name on it that he insisted would
secure "peace for our time."
Within days, Herr Hitler, as Chamberlain called him, attacked his
neighbors and within a year Europe was engulfed in World War II.
Would Obama be so naive or craven? Because of his limited experience,
we don't know. That's why the Wright episode, the most difficult
issue of his idealistic campaign, takes on huge importance. The
lessons are not pretty.
He sloppily compared Wright's virulent anti-Americanism with his
grandmother's private expressions of racial prejudice in a way that
makes them seem equally guilty. He complained repeatedly, including
on Friday on ABC's "The View," that the profane, inflammatory remarks
captured on video clips are a mere "snippet" of Wright's many
sermons.
"People are a mix of good and bad," he said, and added, "I feel badly
he's been characterized in this way and people haven't seen the
broader aspect of him."
What "broader aspect" offsets such hate and lunacy? With new examples
emerging of anti-Semitic writings in the bulletin put out by Wright's
church, there is no mitigating context.
And even as he gradually undercuts his initial denial that he knew of
Wright's distorted views, Obama still suggests the case reflects how
he would behave as President. "Part of what my role in my
politics ... is to get people who don't normally listen to each
other, talk to each other, who say crazy things, who are offended by
each other, for me to understand them and maybe help them understand
each other," he said.
In theory, there is nothing wrong and everything right with that. In
a dangerous world, the potential consequences are frightening
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