Legal Commentary

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

By Beldar

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:

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on June 01, 2008 (boomark / email).