WASHINGTON — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going after his critics on an incendiary tour that is doing his one-time congregant, Barack Obama, little good.
After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.
“This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright,” Wright told the Washington press corps Monday. “It has nothing to do with Sen. Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African- American religious tradition.”
Wright’s tour couldn’t come at a much worse time for Obama, who is campaigning for white working- class voters in Indiana and North Carolina. Many of Wright’s most controversial comments are angry condemnations of the United States for its treatment of blacks — thoughts that were applauded by the black church leaders in his audience Monday but risk offending white voters.
An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Monday suggests the Wright controversy may be hurting Obama among whites. His Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is doing better than Obama among whites in head-to-head matchups with John McCain. Among white respondents, Clinton gets 43 percent to McCain’s 48 percent. Obama gets 38 percent to McCain’s 51 percent.
Obama said Monday, after Wright’s latest comments, “I have said before and I will say again that some of the comments Rev. Wright has made offend me, and I understand why they have offended the American people. … Certainly what the last three days indicates is we’re not coordinating with him.”
Wright suggested Obama was distancing himself only because of political motivations while he, the former pastor, was trying to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
“If Sen. Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected. Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability . . .,” Wright said. “Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors; they have a different person to whom they’re accountable. Whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God Nov. 5.”
Although many of the clips of Wright that have been dogging Obama’s campaign were from several years ago, the pastor repeated some of the same ideas for television cameras Monday.
He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented HIV as a means of genocide against minorities.
“Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said Monday.
