Obama: Wright "a legitimate political issue"

Barack Obama said on Fox News Sunday, re: Jeremiah Wright:

"The fact he's my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue. So I understand that."

OK, as long as we're clear about that -- and that Rev. Wright is too. Just don't want to hear people complaining that the Wright stuff to come is nonsense ginned up by the Republicans. John McCain is now going there:

Senator John McCain delved on Sunday into remarks made by Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., saying it was “beyond belief” that Mr. Wright had likened the Romans at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion to the Marines and had suggested that the United States was acting like Al Qaeda under a different color flag.

Obama has got to be dying for Wright to shut his trap, especially when he's trying to win over the lunchbucket culturally conservative white Democrats -- but that's not going to happen, obviously. A man who is so full of himself as to describe his criticism in the media as a "public crucifixion" -- likening it to the murder of Jesus Christ, as he did in Dallas on Sunday -- is not a man who is going to go gently into that temporary good night, until after the election. They must be peeing their pants with glee at the RNC.

Jeff Jacoby, in writing about why Obama's close personal relationship with unrepentant 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers, explains why all this stuff matters:

In Chicago the other day, radio producer Guy Benson discovered video recordings of Ayers and Dohrn speaking at a reunion of antiwar radicals in November 2007. To live in the United States, Dohrn told the group, is to be "inside the heart of the monster" that is such a "purveyor of violence in the world." Ayers denounced America as an imperial warmonger steeped in "jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy . . . attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on."

Even if Obama doesn't personally believe these things, is it really "tired tripe" to ask why he seems so comfortable in the company of people who do? Is it really "extremely stupid politics" to wonder whether such people might play a role in an Obama administration? Rather than slam the few journalists who raise such questions, might it not behoove others in the media to follow suit?

That's exactly right. It's all about what Obama's definition of normative is, and how that definition is likely to play out when he makes appointments throughout his administration.

UPDATE: To be sure, Clark Stooksbury is correct to point out that the Wright stuff (love typing that) is hardly the most important issue facing the US. I, for one, find the prospects of a McCain foreign policy to be troubling at best. Still, I've been sitting at my desk with CNN on all day (muted), and I've seen Wright's face on TV more than anybody else's. He's making the public rounds, and is certainly not going away. Now, whether or not Jeremiah Wright is a greater threat to the health of the Republic than KBR or Halliburton is a reasonable question, but no small number of people are going to make up their minds on this presidential race over what Jeremiah Wright symbolizes about Obama's judgment. I think we should keep Wright in perspective, as Clark suggests, but I don't share the belief that he is insignificant to the kind of president Barack Obama would be.