BARACK OBAMA, REVEREND WRIGHT, and the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

                              "TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE" 

With McCain apparently falling behind in the polls - it is increasingly clear that it is Obama's race to lose. And speaking about race, it is almost time for the Republicans to resurrect the Reverend Wright issue.

I have a good friend who, while not exactly thrilled about McCain, nevertheless, has serious concerns about voting for Obama. So does her husband, Their major doubt about Obama is his past relationship with Reverend Wright. In response to a passionate endorsement I made for Obama she offered me the following challenge: "if you can give him some rational way to explain how he can vote for a man who sat in a church and heard 1000 sermons for twenty years that spewed hatred of both whitey and America and never did anything to distance himself from it until he was forced to by its negative effect on his candidacy, If you can, E, said he might vote for Obama."

Not one to duck a good challenge I googled Obama and Reverend Wright.

The main criticism concerning  a few of Wright's talks are that they are hate filled, and highly critical of the United States experienced by many as un-American. The typical defensive responses are that as a black man who has experienced prejudice he is an angry spokesman for those who have justifiable cause to lash out at perceived persecutors.

But, say the critics, he is inexcusably over the top and Obama should have denounced his excesses sooner than he did. These critics are even more aggrieved when they discover that Reverend Wright was actually Obama's 'spiritual mentor' for many years, insisting that Obama is guilty of shame by association. They infer that Obama must have been been secretly swayed by the radical ideas of Reverend Wright.

So what about this argument? It is easy to conclude that Obama might in fact be at least tacitly under the influence of his very angry ex spiritual mentor. This is, of course, one point of view. However the next two quotations from Mike Huckabee and John McCain present a surprisingly alternative perspective.

I am uncertain as to the date of the following quotation but it can be found on You Tube. "On Morning Joe today, Huckabee candidly said, "Obama handled this about as well as anybody could." (He laid out his argument pretty simply): "You can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do,...It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what ... Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say 'Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.'"

(Republican nominee John McCain, on Fox News, said the following): "I think that when people support you, it doesn't mean that you support everything they say. Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with, and I don't believe that Sen. Obama would support any of those, as well ... But I do know Sen. Obama. He does not share those views... I know that, for example, I've had endorsements of some people that I didn't share their views, but they endorsed mine. And so I think we've got to be very careful about that part."

Extraordinary comments, no? But there is more to say in defense of Obama. To my knowledge there is virtually no evidence that Obama is anti American in the hot headed Pastor Wright sense of this term. There is however hard evidence that John McCain will flip flop on even his most highly prized values to win and wield power at all costs. How else to better explain his condemnation of the Christian extreme right pre his run for the presidential nomination and now when he is in bed with them up to the hilt?

Words are important - both those that are spoken and those that are unspoken - but actions truly reveal the truth of the essence of a person's essential personality. Virtually all those who have observed Obama's leadership and management style are impressed with his calmness, rationality, fairness, openness to dissenting opinions, combined with a genuine wish to build consensus. People of all sides characteristically come away from even contentious discussions impressed with how well Obama has carefully paid attention to their thoughts and feelings. This is not the character of a person who fits the label of one deserving the attribution of un- American. In point of fact, quite the opposite is true.

Finally, as a psychoanalyst I can't help but speculate that there are probably very complicated psychodynamics underlying the apparent father/son relationship between Reverend Wright and Barack Obama. It is quite conceivable that in the last few years Reverend Wright has come close to ‘losing' it. He appears blinded to objective reality. Doesn't the reader find it curious that after the dust up happened having the force of a near knockout punch directed at Obama that the next public appearance made by his ex spiritual advisor was in some ways even more outrageous and damaging than his first.

Reverend Write is not stupid - he understands cause and effect. He was capable of predicting that  unless he apologized or at least greatly toned down his inflammatory rhetoric in his next public appearance the resulting hew a cry from many voters might well have had catastrophic consequences for his ‘sons' Presidential aspirations. So what might have motivated him to act as if this understandable negative reaction wouldn't matter to him at all?

The most cogent psychological motivation to account for Reverend Wright's odd behavior would be anger at Obama for not paying more credit to his symbolic father which sounds like an archetypal father/son ambivalent relationship.

Further, I wonder if Reverend Wright isn't like the crazy relative that most of us have. A person who may have been very positive at one time to the point of having had a major influence but who over the course of years began losing it. If one genuinely feels gratitude and loved for the ‘good' stuff one gets do they deny its existence because the good is overridden by the not so good?

For all the reasons above I truly hope that every American voter who has doubts about voting for Obama because of his past associations with Reverend Wright approach my remarks with an open mind. If you do so I think it is likely you will conclude with me that although this is a complex issue it is no cause for alarm.