Barack Obama and his wife Michelle appeared on the Today show today for their first interview since Monday’s Wright-under-the-bus speech:
Obama spoke specifically about the comments he made in San Francisco leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, which he lost by 9 percentage points to his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. He spoke about the economic hardships voters were facing and said they were bitter and clung to their guns and religion.
“That was very poorly phrased,” Obama said, saying the remarks came at the end of a long day of campaigning when he was fatigued. “I should have said angry and frustrated [instead of] bitter. I should have said people rely on their religious faith during these times of trouble as opposed to cling.”
After those San Francisco remarks, he was hit with the elitist tag. “The irony is that I think it is fair to say that both Michelle and I grew up in much less privileged circumstances than either of my two other potential opponents,” he said.
Obama knows why he’s attracted the attacks. “Here I am. An African-American named Barack Obama who’s running for president,” he said with a chuckle. “I mean, that’s a leap for folks.”
No, Barack, I’m pretty sure that even a white candidate would have pissed voters in Pennsylvania off if he or she had called them bitter and said that they “clinged” to guns and religion out of a sense of fear. It’s a little to late in a campaign that you’ve consciously tried to make about everything other than race to start playing the race card.
And then there’s good ol’ Rev. Wright:
While admitting to mistakes in his choice of words, he defended the way he’s handled the controversy surrounding his former pastor, the Rev. Wright. When inflammatory comments about America first hit the news earlier this year, Obama stood by his association with the clergyman. Only when Wright elevated the level of his rhetoric this month did Obama finally renounce all ties with him.
“I think that the sequence of events was the right one, because this is somebody who had married Michelle and I; who had baptized our children,” he told Vieira. “When those first snippets came out, I thought it was important to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I had wanted to be politically expedient, I would have distanced myself and denounced him right away. Right? That would have been the easy thing to do.”
Neither he nor Michelle Obama would be drawn into further discussions of Wright.
“We hear time and time again that voters are tired of this,” she said. “They don’t want to hear about this division. They want to know what are we going to do to move beyond these issues. What made me so proud of Barack in this situation is that he is trying to move us as a nation beyond these conversations that divide us so deeply.”
“Do you personally feel that the reverend betrayed your husband?” Vieira asked.
“You know what I think, Meredith,” Mrs. Obama replied. “We’ve got to move forward.”
Because, of course, moving forward allows us to ignore the horrible lapses of judgment your husband made in allowing himself to continue to be associated with a race-baiting anti-American blowhard, right Michelle ?
Here’s the video:
About which, Ed Morrissey says:
Veteran watchers of American politics will see parallels between this appearance and the post-Gennifer Flowers 60 Minutes interview of Bill and Hillary Clinton, although the scandals are much different. In 1992, the issue was Bill’s personal character, and the supportive Hillary performance helped reassure voters that Flowers wasn’t indicative of Bill’s overall character. Look how well that turned out.
For Obama, the issue is his political character, and that’s not going to get assuaged by a suddenly-gentle Michelle Obama. Obama did about as well as he could do in this instance; it’s certainly not a bad interview for him. His recognition of his role in the stumbles will come across well, as opposed to the tack he could have taken in blaming the media, and so on. However, his explanation of his remarks in San Francisco comes about two weeks too late and still doesn’t address the really offensive nature of their Thomas Frankian quality.
Also, Obama comes across as very passive, detached, and almost uninterested, as he has during the debates and other interviews he has given of late. He looks and sounds like he’s running out of gas, and he’s a long way from the finish line.
A very long way.
