Obama Tackles Race Relations
In Major Campaign Speech

By NICK TIMIRAOS

PHILADELPHIA -- Facing the biggest test of his presidential campaign and political career, Sen. Barack Obama renewed his call for generational change and national unity this morning.

In a major speech, he addressed race relations at length, an issue that has come to the forefront of his presidential campaign in recent weeks, and one that all candidates have, until now, hesitated to tackle head on.

Sen. Barack Obama addresses race following the controversy over statements made by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Video courtesy of Fox News. (March 18)

For most of his yearlong presidential campaign, the Illinois senator has steered clear of any major discussion of race -- including the fact that he would be the nation's first black president -- in part because that might dilute his promise to transcend race. But that strategy proved to untenable as his campaign kept being dragged into a discussion of race. The last straw came last week, when videos surfaced of racially divisive comments made by his longtime pastor and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," he said. "We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality."

He continued: "The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American."

That drew sustained applause from his audience at Philadelphia's Constitution Center.

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The address presented Sen. Obama, who leads Sen. Hillary Clinton in the delegate tally for the Democratic nomination, with two important tests: show voters that he could beat back an unfolding political crisis while dispelling the notion that he shares his pastor's views that seem to contradict his call to transcend the nation's racial divisions.

Sen. Obama faced a full-blown crisis late last week when he strongly condemned remarks that portrayed Mr. Wright as a radical who called the Sept. 11 attacks the results of a foreign policy that ignored the suffering of Palestinians and black South Africans and urged his parishioners to sing "God Damn America" for the country's mistreatment of inner city blacks.

The clips threatened to jeopardize Sen. Obama's credibility as someone who has promised to move beyond the nation's racial wounds because he has been a member of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for nearly 20 years. Mr. Wright officiated at Sen. Obama's wedding and baptized his two children.

Tuesday's address was to last about 30 minutes, and Sen. Obama's wife, Michelle, was scheduled to attend. In the address, Sen. Obama sought to dispel any doubts about his relationship with Mr. Wright, where he said he knew that Mr. Wright had been a fierce critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, that he had heard him make some controversial remarks in church, and that he strongly disagreed with many of Mr. Wright's political views.

But he said Tuesday that those remarks weren't simply controversial. "They expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country," he was scheduled to say. "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."

Sen. Obama also refused to disown Rev. Wright, a move that risked the appearance of casting off a close friend and spiritual adviser in order to save his political ambitions.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," he said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother," a woman who helped raise him but had confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street "and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

"These people are a part of me," he said.

The Obama campaign hoped to quickly move past the issue with a frontal assault that saw Sen. Obama appear on all three cable news networks on Friday after issuing a statement to the Huffington Post Web site where he condemned the remarks as "appalling" and said he had not attended church when the controversial sermons were delivered.

While Sen. Clinton and her campaign has not made an issue of the remarks, Sen. Obama's relationship with Mr. Wright could be fodder for Republicans to exploit in the general election, and conservative blogs and talk radio have already said the controversy raises questions about Sen. Obama's judgment. The controversy could also undercut Sen. Obama's argument that he should be the Democratic nominee because of his ability to appeal to Republicans and independents in the fall contests against Sen. John McCain.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows both Democratic candidates ahead of Sen. McCain, but for the first time in weeks, Sen. Clinton has a larger lead than her opponent does. Sen. Clinton leads 51%-46% against Sen. McCain, while Sen. Obama edges the Arizona senator 49%-47%. But a new CNN poll of Democratic voters shows Sen. Obama up 52%-45% against Sen. Clinton.

Pundits have already compared this morning's address to John F. Kennedy's famous speech that sought to dispel a predominantly Protestant nation's doubts about electing the first Catholic president. Last year, Republican candidate Mitt Romney gave a similar address to assuage voters concerns about his Mormon faith.

Associated Press

Barack Obama speaks about race during an address in Philadelphia Tuesday.

Race has boiled the surface throughout the campaign, first after the Iowa caucuses when Obama supporters alleged that Clinton surrogates were using coded language to raise race as an issue. President Clinton was roundly blamed for injecting race into the campaign in South Carolina, where some believed he tried to paint Sen. Obama as "the black candidate" when he compared Sen. Obama's lopsided win in the state as no different than Jesse Jackson, who won the state in 1984 and 1988 but had a more limited appeal among whites nationally.

Mr. Clinton re-entered the fray this weekend, where he called those accusations "a total myth and a mugging" and he pushed back against any suggestion that he had been muzzled for angrily criticizing his wife's rival.

If anyone had played the race card, he told CNN, it was the Obama campaign. "It's been pretty well established," he said. "Charlie Rangel … the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in unequivocal terms in South Carolina that no one in our campaign played any race card, that we had some played against us, but we didn't play any."

Last week, both campaigns said that the other was using race for tactical advantage when former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro suggested that Sen. Obama wouldn't be so popular if he were white. "The country is caught up in the concept," she said. The remarks created a firestorm and she resigned her position as a Clinton fund-raiser.

Sen. Obama appealed to the media, in part, to help move beyond the racial back and forth that has grown to define the Democratic contest.

"We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election," he said. "We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies."

"But if we do … nothing will change," he said.