BeldarBlog

WaPo says Obama would be "pragmatic" to adopt Bush's Iraq policy and says Obama is "unreasonably wedded" to bug-out plans

In an incredible editorial sub-titled "After all, he doesn't see the region much differently than President Bush does," Saturday's WaPo notes, as I did yesterday, that over the course of the past week, Obama has flip-flopped into general alignment with the Bush Administration's position on Jerusalem and, more broadly, most of the Bush Administration's position on how to approach Iran.

It then predicts, amazingly, that Obama will soon also flip-flop himself into a betrayal of the Hard Left on Iraq:

The gap in Mr. Obama's Middle East policy remains Iraq. Mr. Obama has used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself politically from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and now from Mr. McCain. Yet, in doing so, he has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country — a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained. Remarkably, only a sentence or two about Iraq appeared in Mr. Obama's AIPAC speech, and advisers say he may visit the country in coming months. That would offer him the opportunity to outline a strategy based on sustaining the dramatic reduction in violence recorded this year. No, the left wouldn't like it, but it would be in keeping with Mr. Obama's pragmatic approach to the rest of the region.

I would pay good money to be able to hear Dick Cheney's guffaws as he reads this over breakfast. It's as close to an apology as he and Dubya will ever get from the WaPo.

Next year in Jerusalem?

The precise status of Jerusalem has been the focus of blow-torch hot debate continuously since it was captured (or liberated or re-captured, there's argument even about that) by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel, pointing to historic Jewish ties to the ancient city going back to the 10th Century BC, considers Jerusalem to be its modern capital. Indeed, the distantly subsidiary issue of when and whether the U.S. will officially move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has itself been the subject of years of national and international debate, and even of legislation passed by Congress in 1995 (supposedly compelling a move that, once again this week, has been suspended for yet another six months). Palestinians consider Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine, however, and continue to demand its "return."

I mean no offense to anyone, but if you didn't already know this, you cannot consider yourself even moderately well informed on Middle East diplomacy in particular or world history in general. Jerusalem is a hot-button issue. Any American politician or diplomat who ventures to talk about Jerusalem's future is rolling sideways through a minefield.

But now somebody is running for president on a platform which promises that through smart and tough diplomacy, he's going to fix all the Middle East's problems that poor damn dumb George W. Bush has just willfully ignored for seven years. He's bringing us change you can believe in! So he shows up to woo the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Wednesday of this week, and here's what happens, according to WaPo's Dana Milbank (boldface mine):

A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday — and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.

He promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force has "rightly been labeled a terrorist organization." [*Cough!* — Beldar] He used terms such as "false prophets of extremism" and "corrupt" while discussing Palestinians. And [Obama] promised that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Vowing to stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, the newly minted nominee apparent added: "I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally, Israel. Do not be confused."

How could they be confused? As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty by a candidate who, during the primary, had positioned himself to Hillary Clinton's left on matters such as Iran. Yesterday, Obama, who has generally declined to wear an American-flag lapel pin, wore a joint U.S.-Israeli [flag] pin, and even tried a Hebrew phrase on the crowd.

Brilliant public diplomacy, no? Surely the reasonable leaders who purport to represent the Palestinian people must have been persuaded by this dazzling, diplomatic young American with the multi-cultural name and heritage, no?

No.

A day later, offstage (and with news of his retreat buried by his MSM friends on places like page A6 of the WaPo), Diplomat-in-Chief Obama has to back down with his tail between his legs (boldface mine):

Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged yesterday that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that the city "must remain undivided."

Obama's statement, made during a speech Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, drew a swift rebuke from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"This statement is totally rejected," Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."

The Bush administration's official position is that the status of Jerusalem must be decided by the parties. Before he left office, President Bill Clinton proposed a formula under which "Jerusalem should be an open and undivided city," including locating the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

Obama quickly backtracked yesterday in an interview with CNN.

"Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," Obama said when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

Yes, that damned, dumb, undiplomatic George W. Bush is sure holding up the works in achieving Middle East peace. It's a good thing that Obama will be bringing us change we can believe in — typically from one of his own half-baked positions to some different one, often within 24 hours. In this instance, Obama's latest "change" is to precisely the position on Jerusalem that Dubya has held continuously through the last seven years.

Genius! Insightful! How has the world managed without Diplomat-in-Chief Obama for so long?

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UPDATE (Sat Jun 7 @ wee-small-hours): Aliens appear to have kidnapped James Taranto and replaced him with a facsimile programmed to issue pro-Obama non sequiturs. I pray for his escape. (And to put it mildly, I disagree with his essay on Obama's "Jerusalem kerfuffle," which lurches to a conclusion inconsistent with either its own premises or his usual good judgment.) To the extent Taranto is back-handedly saying that Dubya's policy (which Obama flip-flopped into) is reasonable, he's right. Praising Obama's method of getting there, though, and failing to recognize his inconsistency in route, is over-generous to the rookie diplomat, for its his consistency in judgment that is precisely at issue.

Not credible

Bill Clinton and Gina Gershon?!? Not believable, not even before her lawyers' threat-letter to Vanity Fair with its denials that they were ever even alone together.

 

There's frankly no telling which Hollywood types might be willing to do a Monica-reprise even today. But Bubba would never, ever pick someone who could, on a whim (or if offended), kick his butt between his ears and beyond. I have no doubt that Gina Gershon could do that, and Bubba would know that too. She's just not remotely his type.

Obama friend, client, contributor, and home-purchase benefactor Tony Rezko convicted on 16 of 24 corruption counts

Like this was a big surprise to anyone who's been paying attention:

A federal jury today convicted developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko of corruption charges for trading on his clout as a top adviser and fundraiser to Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Rezko's guilty verdict on 16 of 24 corruption counts could have broad repercussions for Blagojevich, who made Rezko a central player in his cabinet. It could also prove a political liability for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who once counted Rezko as a friend and fundraiser, as the likely Democratic presidential nominee heads into the general election campaign against Republican John McCain.

Here's how the WaPo's David Ignatius charitably summarized the Rezko-Obama relationship in April (ellipsis by WaPo):

Obama met Rezko in the early 1990s as he was finishing up at Harvard Law School. Rezko was well connected in Chicago's African American community, in part because he had worked with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, the son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, when he was managing the career of boxer Muhammad Ali, according to a May 2005 profile in the Chicago Tribune.

Rezko moved into real estate and political fundraising, often a combustible combination in Chicago. Rezko offered Obama a job with his real estate company soon after they met, but Obama declined. When Obama decided to run for the state Senate in 1995, Rezko was his "first substantial contributor," according to the Tribune. That money relationship continued, with Rezko raising as much as $250,000 over the course of Obama's five Illinois races, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.

The friendship may have reflected the fact that both men were outsiders, trying to establish themselves in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago. Obama told the Sun-Times last month: "My assessment of Tony Rezko was that he was an immigrant who had sort of pulled himself up by his bootstraps.... I think he saw me as somebody who had talent, but he was probably also intrigued by my international background."

Part of what Obama says he liked about Rezko was his graciousness: "He never asked me for anything."

The relationship became controversial because of the now-famous home-purchase deal: When Obama and his wife bought a $1.65 million house in Chicago in June 2005, Rezko's wife simultaneously bought the adjoining lot and later sold part of it to the Obamas so that they could have a bigger yard.

Obama conceded in an interview with the Chicago Tribune last month that in the real estate deal, "I made a mistake in not seeing the potential conflicts of interest or appearances of impropriety." He said of Rezko's motivation in the purchase of the adjoining lot, "He perhaps thought that this would strengthen our relationship. He could have even thought he was doing me a favor."

What's troubling about this story is that at the time Obama bought the house in June 2005, allegations had already surfaced about Rezko's alleged influence-peddling.

(Yeah, right: "He never asked me for anything," nyuk nyuk. Neither did Don Corleone, who instead said only, "Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day." Graciousness, indeed.)

What's also "troubling" about this story is that Rezko's simultaneous purchase from the same sellers was at its full $650k asking price, whereas Obama got a $300k discount off the $1.95M asking price for his house. Oh, Rezko and the sellers of course deny that Rezko overpaid so Obama could underpay. (To admit that sort of oral quid pro quo almost certainly would have gotten everyone, including Obama, convicted of fraud in connection with the mortgage Rezko's wife took out.) But we're supposed to believe (as good little suckers) that the professional real estate mogul, the slumlord, couldn't manage to knock as much as $1000 of the asking price of the property his wife bought — indeed, doesn't even claim to have tried to — while clever, sophisticated Barack and Michelle simultaneously negotiated a $300k price drop from the very same sellers. Yeah, right.

Realistically, the whole set of transactions stink (look at the property layouts as shown in the video linked here) — and indeed, they smell exactly like a six-figure hidden cash contribution by a well-connected, now-convicted influence peddler directly to the Obama family. Note: two of Rezko's convictions are for money-laundering, a crime very typically committed through fraudulent, collusive, but hard-to-prove mis-evaluations of property values.

Ignatius also left out the part — famously used as a debate zinger by Hillary Clinton — about Obama's law firm defending slumlord Rezko in lawsuits against his slum-residing tenants. Doncha know Hill and Bill are cussin' the Rezko jury, though — not for their result as such, but for not reaching it before yesterday?

(Congrats, by the way, to U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald and his staff. Righteous work, folks.)

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UPDATE (Wed Jun 4 @ 8:25pm): And this is no surprise, either:

"I'm saddened by today's verdict," Obama said in a statement. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform."

Fooled! Fooled once again! Golly, Sen. Obama, how good a judge of character do you claim to be? Is there anybody you've associated with for the last couple of decades who you actually do know?

NYT: Obama stands "calm in the swirl of history"; also time-travels, but makes no time for clerkship and little time for practicing law

In a fawning news article by Michael Powell, the New York Times today describes Barack Obama as "a protean political figure, inspiring devotion in supporters who see him as a transformative leader even as he remains inscrutable to critics." The basic facts of his biography, however, such as they are, are apparently also inscrutable even to adoring reporters from the NYT.

In the article's fourth paragraph: "He turned down a prestigious federal appellate court clerkship while at Harvard to work as a community organizer." And then later, in more detail:

Abner J. Mikva, the former judge, asked Mr. Obama, fresh out of Harvard, to apply as his clerk. Mr. Obama declined, preferring to labor as a community organizer. But, characteristically, he later befriended the older man.

The problem with this is that Obama's "community organizer" days preceded his Harvard Law School days. And after graduating from Harvard Law, Obama went to work at least nominally as an associate attorney at the small Chicago law firm then known as "Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard," with which he continued to be affiliated in a more limited capacity throughout his Illinois Legislature tenure up until his U.S. Senate run in 2004. [Update: But see my update below, re 1991-1993, during which it appears that Obama probably temporarily returned to activities that could qualify as a "community organizer" even after getting his law degree and law license. Mea culpa (although I had some help in making this mistake).]

I say "at least nominally" because that "law firm says Obama logged 3,723 billable hours during his tenure from 1993 to 2004, most of it during the first four years." Even Obama's civil rights or other "public interest" legal work would have been logged — such lawsuits always seek awards of attorneys' fees, and you can't get them unless you've logged the hours, even if your clients weren't paying you out of pocket. But that's fewer hours than would typically be logged in two years by almost any young associate at almost any big-city for-profit law firm. Supposedly Obama took time off to work on his first autobiography. But it's still hard to see how he can be described as ever having been more than a part-time, not-very-serious lawyer, at least based on those numbers and the very vague descriptions of his legal work provided in his books or in news articles like this one.

Look, it's not like the guy has held a whole lot of responsible jobs. That not even his hagiographers at the New York Times can keep them straight also suggests that there's also a lack of substance to the jobs Obama purports to have held. It's either that or, gosh, he's so "transformative" that he can time-travel.

*******

There's also something a bit hinky about the judicial clerkship Obama so nobly turned down.

I do not doubt that Obama, as a magna cum laude graduate and president of the Harvard Law Review, could have landed a prestigious federal circuit court clerkship upon his graduation in 1991. Indeed, those credentials would typically lead to clerking for a prestigious circuit judge and, in the second year following graduation, a Supreme Court clerkship. And Judge Mikva, a Carter appointee from 1979, was by 1991 the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. An opportunity to clerk for him would indeed have been much coveted.

But the normal protocol is that students make written applications for such judicial clerkships. The unwritten understanding is that law students aren't supposed to apply to any judge from whom they wouldn't immediately accept a position if tendered. (I.e., no student is supposed to answer "no" to a clerkship offer.) So did Obama apply, get an offer, and then turn Chief Judge Mikva down anyway? Or was Obama, as the first black president of the HLR, already such a rock-star in legal-academic circles that he received an unsolicited offer from Judge Mikva?

(A third possibility, I suppose, is that Judge Mikva had a "standing offer" to every year's HLR president. I've heard of such arrangements, but I don't know if Judge Mikva indulged in them; and my impression was even such judges who do have such arrangements still prefer that the students go through the formality of submitting an application.)

I don't doubt that Obama and Judge Mikva later became friends, since both were non-tenure track instructors at the University of Chicago Law School later in the decade. And Mikva was a very political lawyer who later served as White House Counsel for the Clinton Administration, so it's not inconceivable that he might have been more than casually receptive to career tracks like Obama's.

Perhaps my suspicions are unfounded, and they're just a product of my surprise that someone with law school credentials bespeaking extraordinary legal talent apparently chose never to use that talent in any really significant way. I'm personally unsympathetic to the notion that turning down the clerkship was so noble: I clerked for a federal circuit judge in 1980-1981, and without exception, every lawyer I know who served as a law clerk to a federal judge feels that he or she rendered a valuable public service by so doing, almost certainly greater in scope than what we could have done even at a "public interest" law firm. Given his political sympathies, the idea that he could have done more "good" working for a small Chicago firm during his first year out of law school than he could have while working for a liberal judge like Mikva is pretty hard to swallow. But suffice it to say that Obama's achievements as a practicing lawyer appear to be even thinner than his achievements as a state or federal legislator.

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UPDATE (Wed Jun 4 @ 6:50pm): Or did the NYT get it right after all? I hate to make mistakes in posts, but when I do, I'd rather catch and admit them myself.

The descriptions I'd previously read of Obama working as a "community organizer," and certainly his experiences in that role as told in his first book, Dreams from My Father, all focus on 1985-1988. But Obama's Wikipedia entry currently says, of his immediate post-law school activities, only this: "Obama graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, then returned to Chicago where he headed a voter registration drive and began writing his first book, Dreams from My Father, a memoir published in 1995." In turn, it references this article from Chicago Magazine in January 1993 about his work in a voter registration drive in 1992. If that also counts as "community organizer" — and I suppose it could, since that job description could mean almost anything — then perhaps he returned to that vocation, briefly, after law school:

Carol Moseley Braun's upset primary victory over Alan Dixon last March [i.e., March of 1992] altered [Project Vote! founder Sandy] Newman's feelings. "It's not that I wanted to influence the Senate race," Newman says. "Project Vote! is nonpartisan, strictly nonpartisan. But we do focus our efforts on minority voters, and on states where we can explain to them why their vote will matter. Braun made that easier in Illinois." So Newman decided to open a Cook County Project Vote! office and went looking for someone to head it.

The name Barack Obama surfaced. "I was asking around among community activists in Chicago and around the country, and they kept mentioning him," Newman says. Obama by then was working with church and community leaders on the West Side, and he was writing a book that the publisher Simon & Schuster had contracted for while he was editor of the law review. He was 30 years old.

When Newman called, Obama agreed to put his other work aside. "I'm still not quite sure why," Newman says. ''This was not glamorous, high-paying work. But I am certainly grateful. He did one hell of a job."

In that case, it's the LAT instead of the NYT who's confused (and partly responsible for my confusion), because of this statement in its April story about Obama's work as a lawyer: "Obama arrived in Chicago in 1993 with a degree from Harvard Law School and was hired as a junior lawyer at the firm then known as Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard."

The remainder of my confusion can be sourced to Obama's own biography page on his campaign website, which doesn't deign to use many actual dates: "He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law." No mention there of a temporary return to "community organizer" status either.

I do know that Obama was licensed in Illinois in December 1991, from which we can confidently infer that he took and passed the summer 1991 bar exam. Beyond that, however, commenters are welcome to provide more info, especially if accompanied by links.

Congrats, America

I'm in full agreement with Chief Justice John Roberts: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Despite the racism bound up in its history, I firmly believe that America is ready to follow that prescription.

The fact that a black man has been chosen as the presidential nominee of a major party is not, by itself, any reason to vote for him. Likewise, there are many reasons why I won't vote for that particular man; his skin color isn't one.

But I congratulate America over what this data point reveals and confirms. Obama's nomination conclusively proves that Rev. Wright is wrong about America, and that Wright is in fact a relic of the history that has passed him (and other racists) by.

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UPDATE (Wed Jun 4 @ 11:00am): One of the least perceptive articles on politics I've ever read, written by The New Republic's senior editor John P. Judis, concludes with this paragraph:

In the end, though, Obama faces hurdles at least as great as those that Kennedy faced. Kennedy never fully overcame anti-Catholic prejudice during his campaign. It was only in the aftermath of his victory that the country fully accepted a Catholic politician as an ordinary American politician. In November, Obama may lose far more than he gains from the sheer fact of his being an African American. If, in October, the country is still discussing Obama's relationship to Reverend Wright and not the Republican record on the economy and foreign policy, he is likely to suffer defeat — not as decisively, certainly, as Al Smith did, but defeat nonetheless.

If, in October, the country is still discussing Obama's relationship to Reverend Wright, that will mean that the country rejects black-on-white racism, which in Wright's case is mixed with healthy portions of conspiracy-theory nuttiness and plain old anti-Americanism. One need not be white, nor racist, to take offense at Wright's rants; indeed, they offend as many black Americans as they do Americans of any other race, and they ought to have offended the Obama family before they hit You-Tube (which is the whole point). And those problems are particular to Obama and Wright — they're not something that would afflict all black candidates. Only an utter dimwit could interpret Obama's political problems arising from his relationship with Wright as evidencing widespread traditional white-on-black racism of the sort that was still widespread in, say, 1960.

Beldar's big-picture observations re Obama's nomination

In April 2007, I predicted that Barack Obama would win the Democratic nomination, but I did not predict the sliver-of-a-whisker closeness of the race. Now the five months of the primaries are done, with five months remaining to the election. Besides the identities of the two major parties' nominees, what else, if anything, is the big news from the last five months?

It's this: I expected Barack Obama to be substantially unbloodied at this point. Instead, he's bleeding badly from the nose and lip, and he's already been forced to duck, weave, and counter-punch. Most importantly, his bloodying came largely at the hands of his fellow Democrats, during a period when the loyalties of his natural allies in the mainstream media were still somewhat divided. McCain therefore will avoid any significant backlash — all the backlash has stuck to Hillary.

Much of Obama's appeal has been in his charisma and polish. The charisma remains, but the polish has been permanently marred.

I don't doubt that Obama will largely regain his footing, and most of his recent stumbles and gaffes will be inconsequential by November. But the cuts that have been already been opened — mainly vulnerabilities associated with his elitist attitudes and with his long-time close associations, including Wright, Pfleger, Trinity, Rezko, Ayers/Dohrn, and (potentially most dangerously) his wife — are in spots that are likely to be pounded again and again. The pounding will be less by McCain than by other foes of the Democrats — but those primary wounds will remain at enormous risk of re-opening and then copiously hemorrhaging throughout the general election campaign.

Simultaneously, the opportunities for sharp punches that have always been available to any Obama opponent — chiefly relating his incredible lack of experience, a topic that lacks the backlash risk of the personal association issues — remain available to McCain. From Obama's speech tonight:

In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.

But exactly what — besides a meteoric rise through politics and his rock-star cult status — are Barack Obama's "many accomplishments"? I have a finger and thumb left over on one hand when I try to list them, and even those are quite modest: being the minority-party senator allowed by two senior GOP senators to co-sponsor noncontroversial bills on securing ex-Soviet nuclear weapons and government reporting on spending, and being a co-sponsor with dozens of others on a laughably toothless ethics bill. And even those "accomplishments" are dwarfed by his utter failure to convene even a single hearing on a major Senate subcommittee whose chairmanship was entrusted to him by Senate Democrats. Senators famously can be divided into "work-horses" and "show-horses," but if we factor in the hundreds of votes Obama's missed while campaigning, he's made his only mark as a U.S. senator by being a "no-show horse"!

Obama also remains the candidate of MoveOn.org. He is of, and beholden to, and naturally in sympathy with, the Very Hard and Very Angry Left, not the political center. He is more radical than McGovern, and that's an objective fact simply based on his voting record. I read this week someone's analysis that "McGovern is to Obama as Goldwater was to Reagan." That strikes me as profoundly wishful thinking. There may be a few more states now with Hard Left majorities than there were in 1972 (when Nixon won in the Electoral College by 520/17), but not anywhere near enough to get to 270 electoral votes.

McCain's still the underdog. He's far from my ideal candidate. But he ought to monopolize the political center. His chances are better, by far, than I would have predicted a year ago, or than they possibly could have been absent the bruising, extended Democratic primary. Bottom line:  A five-month battle wouldn't have been adequate for America to complete its reality check on Barack Obama. A ten-month battle may be, and come November, that's what we'll have had.

Obama must rely on minions to rewrite history to dilute the effect of his worst gaffes

Here's the concluding paragraph of a New York Times report announcing that Sen. & Mrs. Obama have resigned their membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ:

Now that Mr. Obama has addressed his ties to the church and pastor in a long speech and fully broken with both, it is not clear what else he can say or do to ameliorate the continued concerns of some voters about those associations.

The answer is: There's nothing he can do to overcome the concerns of some voters. His resignation from Trinity now, coupled with his reluctant denouncement of Rev. Wright's historical and current remarks, amounts to a clear admission that what Trinity condones is toxic for a presidential candidate. But those particular voters — the ones who are paying attention — have already noted that Obama's relationship with this church has been longer than any other adult relationship except for his marriage. He's been a member of that church for many times longer than he's been either a U.S. senator or state legislator, for example.

Thus, there's nothing else he can say or do to fix this. Everything he says about it is likely to make things worse, in fact, for prospective voters who've been paying attention.

So he has to rely on proxies. Fortunately for him, he has lots, in institutions like the New York Times. And they will be his willing accomplices in rewriting history, at least to knock off the roughest edges. Even to the point of telling enormous whoppers. For example, from the same NYT story:

Mr. Wright, however, emerged from retirement in April and spoke at the National Press Club, offering deeper and broader criticism of the United States and using mocking language. Among other things, he opined that the United States government may have had a hand in creating the AIDS epidemic.

This paragraph is one of the most egregious examples I've ever seen of lying by omission.

What made Wright's comment so outrageous was not his suggestion that the government "had a hand in creating the AIDS epidemic," but rather that the government — the white U.S. of KKK A. government — had done so specifically to afflict blacks. The NYT's sanitized version suggests that Obama's multi-decade pastor accused the United States government of being inept; but Obama's multi-decade pastor actually accused the United States government of engaging in deliberate and covert genocide against its own black citizenry:

MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

WRIGHT: Oh, are you — is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't — 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.

In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the — one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

Describing Wright as suggesting only that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus, friends and neighbors, is a lie told by the writers (supposedly news writers, mind you) and editors and publishers of the NYT to rewrite recent history for the benefit of Obama's reputation among people who weren't paying close attention earlier in this election year. It's the kind of lie that ought to get several people fired, and indeed, drummed out of "professional journalism."

I shan't hold my breath waiting for that, though.

This entire episode involving Trinity and Wright would have ended the candidacy of any presidential front-runner, Democratic or Republican, in decades past. It's vastly more consequential, for example, than Edmund Muskie's perhaps-teary cheeks. In terms of actual fitness to be president, it's probably more meaningful than Gary Hart bouncing Donna Rice on his lap aboard the Monkey Business.

But what Obama learned from Clinton — Bill, not Hillary — is that if you're sufficiently messianic, you can brazen out almost anything. Being utterly shameless means there must not have been anything really very shameful after all — at least so long as your friends can be counted upon to sand off the roughest edges (i.e., to lie for you), and then to quickly change the subject.