Tethered Swimming

Barack Obama seems to be getting high marks for his speech yesterday but it’s too soon to tell what the final spin and lasting fallout will be. It may put this farcical stuff about his preacher behind him for awhile, it may not. It may be a brilliant campaign pivot that neutralizes the reverend’s comments by putting them in the broader contexts of race and our silly political discourse, it may not. It doesn’t really matter either way though because a month from now this whole incident is barely going to be remembered.

The more - ahem - controversy the Senator from Illinois endures this early in the year the better off he is likely to be later. We can use Rev. Wright’s comments as a topical example of why. The money quote of this little tempest is the phrase “God damn America” in place of the more traditional, but equally meaningless, “God bless America”. Those three little words put the huffers and puffers of the flag-pin set into a tizzy and caused enough media hyperventilating that the candidate himself had to go on television and give a big speech.

There are a lot of people here in America who wear their religion and their patriotism right on their sleeves (hopefully lots of people can see them there!). To see those two concepts employed in the reverse of their accustomed expectations must have been very distressing. But I’ve got two pieces of bad news for anyone who thinks this is long-term damaging to Obama’s campaign. First, Obama didn’t say it, someone else did. Even if that someone is close to Obama it still isn’t him. Second, this whole thing is primarily about shock value and shock wears off rapidly in contemporary America.

“God damn America” is only going to work once as serious political theater. It’ll be in pamphlets and talking points from now through November - no doubt about that, but the big media storm is only going to happen once, here in March, eight long months (two-hundred and forty-one news cycles!) from the election. It’s not news a second time unless the good reverend has some even more cutting rhetorical bombs in his repertoire. It’s tough to imagine one as concise and biting as “God damn America” though. My personal suggestion would be “God should make white people get abortions” but it doesn’t seem too likely that he’d say that.

In any case Rev. Wright has now been - ahem - exposed to the national media. He’s no longer working directly for the campaign and any time his comments come up again Obama or one of his surrogates can point to yesterday’s speech and call the matter closed. That isn’t going to satisfy everyone, but long before November it is that position, rather than outrage over the remarks, which will occupy the media high ground. The same goes for the picture of Obama in the turban, the lunatic “madrassa” story from last year, and all this other crap; they’re good for a couple of news cycles and little more.

If this had come out right before Halloween it would be different. An October Surprise, which may still be in store for us, is a hallowed American political tradition. But a “March Surprise”, if there even is such a thing, probably describes a college basketball game.