Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Harrell Blog

Law Students

: Harrell Blog

Obama's latest kerfuffles

By pharrell

It's incoming on several fronts for the Obama campaign today, with controversial statements by his (now retired) pastor finally bubbling up from the the blogs to the headlines and disclosures of additional Rezko money to his state legislative races.

Obama's candid statement on the HuffingtonPost might help to allay the pastor issue, or at least keep it from dominating more than a couple of newscycles. Obama should come through it fine, skin a little thicker for the wear, since he himself has never given the slightest hint that he shares his pastor's views on these issues and a presidential contest should, at core, be about the candidates' beliefs. It's abundantly clear that he loves this country and is far more interested in transcending the balkanized politics that Wright's comments suggest than in continuing them. (It better not come out, however, that Obama actually heard his pastor make remarks like those Obama has rejected).

I also think that these last financial disclosures may finally be the end of l'affaire Rezko. The campaign finally gave the Chicago Tribune various documents related to his relationship with Rezko, and if this is all they can find (the documents caused today's news)--if there really is no evidence that Obama did Rezko any favors--the media will finally get bored of this one.

If there is any saving grace for the Obama campaign from this terrible of weeks (remember, Samantha Power resigned just a couple of days ago, and we're barely past the Austan Goolsbee matter), it is that it happened now, five full weeks before the next primary voting. That's an eternity in this race, and it's far better for the campaign to deal with this stuff now than to be scrambling to do damage control in the days before an election.

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on March 15, 2008 (boomark / email).