Below The Beltway

It’s becoming clearer by the day that the Jeremiah Wright story isn’t going to go away no matter how much Barack Obama may want it to:

Sen. Barack Obama again sought to distance himself from the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. yesterday after his former pastor capped a weekend media offensive with an appearance in Washington in which he revisited many of his most controversial comments.

“He does not speak for me,” the Democratic presidential candidate said as he campaigned across North Carolina. “He does not speak for the campaign.”

Obama aides said Wright had rebuffed their recent offers of public relations assistance. They stressed that they had no warning about a media blitz that included an appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS on Friday night, a nationally televised speech to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday evening and yesterday’s appearance at the National Press Club.

Wright, the former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago who officiated at Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters, became the center of controversy after clips from some of his most inflammatory sermons hit the airwaves earlier this year. In one sermon, delivered the Sunday after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Wright said that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” for its own acts of “terrorism.” In another, he said blacks should sing “God damn America” instead of “God Bless America” to protest centuries of mistreatment.

Now that this story is almost two months old, it doesn’t matter if Wright is part of the campaign or not. The two men are linked, and they’ll remain linked until Barack Obama throws Jeremiah Wright to the sharks, as Andrew Sullivan suggests:

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright’s views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era’s obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright’s massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

We need a speech or statement from Obama in which he utterly repudiates this poison, however personally difficult that may be, however damaging the impact will be. The statement today will not do it. This is no longer about cynics trying to associate one man’s politics with another. It is now about Wright attempting to associate himself and some of his noxious, stupid, rancid views with the likely Democratic nominee. Wright has given Obama no choice - and he has also given him another opportunity. He needs to seize it.

At this point, it would seem, Obama has no other choice.