Rev Wright’s jeremiads could help Obama

Every few years New York City cops hear the growl of clear and present danger and subdue the threat with powerful volleys of lead. With Sean Bell, an African-American, the fusillade rose to 50 shots, deemed necessary by the men in blue to lay low Bell outside a nightclub in November 2006.

In Queens last week a judge ruled that the cops who turned young Bell into a sieve on the eve of his wedding had been filled with most understandable apprehension, even though Bell turned out to be unarmed. As usual the cops walk and sometime later the victim's family may get a settlement from the city. The important thing is that justice is seen not to have been done. Power needs the periodic buttress of irrational, uniformed violence.

The crowds protesting in Queens after Judge Anthony Cooperman let Bell's killers go free a week ago were orderly, as instructed by an African-American. "We're a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down," Barack Obama said when asked about the case by reporters in Indiana. "Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counter-productive."

Spoken like a graduate of Harvard Law School! In fact, Obama's white rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, put more juice into her press release: "This tragedy has deeply saddened New Yorkers - and all Americans. My thoughts are with Nicole and her children and the rest of Sean's family during this difficult time. The court has given its verdict, and now we await the conclusion of a Department of Justice civil rights investigation."

Obama is now well-advanced along the path of reassurance, where each candidate nearing the White House makes clear their fidelity to the standard of irrational violence. As with McCain and Mrs Clinton this year, he has affirmed his willingness to wipe out America's enemies with nuclear bombs and missiles, though he drew some rebukes for saying he was not in favour of nuking the Hindu Kush, thus casting a disquieting flicker of reason across the path of reassurance.

Since he is, though half-white, black in appearance - and in such matters appearance counts for everything - Obama has dealt with the pigmentation problem by declaring that race is no longer a troubling factor in America, and should be low on the fix-it list of any incoming President. In Selma, Alabama, he declared that blacks "have already come 90 per cent of the way" to equality. Indeed he's already issued white America a loss damage waiver: "If I lose, it would not be because of race. It would be because of mistakes I made along the campaign trail."

Actually, if Obama loses, he will probably ascribe it privately to a mistake he made 20 years ago when he stepped into the Rev Jeremiah Wright's tumultuous church in Chicago instead of praying sedately in some dour white Presbyterian chapel.

Obama thought he'd dealt with the Wright problem by making a tasteful speech about race in Philadelphia in late March in which he said the fiery pastor was anchored in the divisiveness of the past. But Wright came bounding back last weekend, with an unflinching interview with Bill Moyers on TV and a rip-roaring sermon at the National Press Club in Washington.

Wright is clearly the most powerful public orator in America since Martin Luther King, and as radical as MLK in his toughest moments. People have puzzled about Wright's timing, which from Obama's point of view, could not have been worse. I'd bet that there was no plan. At the Press Club, Wright felt the wind at his back and gave the folks his basic sermon. It's the way he is and 95 per cent of it makes total sense and is a breath of fresh air, as Wright ushers the Real America onto the stage, as opposed to the political candidates' flattering fictions.

But, of course, all this week Obama has been in despair. Now he expels Wright from his life. He derides the man who presided at his wedding. "Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems.”

Has Wright really cost Obama the presidency? I doubt it. There are Americans who will never vote for Obama, because he looks like a black man, whether or not his hue is darkened by Wright's shadow. There are Americans reminded by Wright that whatever Obama may say, there are still a lot of angry black people. But particularly this week these Americans have seen that Obama isn't angry and doesn't want to demand reparations for slavery and justice for Sean Bell. He and Wright are in opposite corners of the ring. That could help Obama, having a black man as well as whites to run against. ·