Two Questions for Sen. Obama

by Lanny Davis - 03/19/08 10:10 AM ET

I read Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) recent speech on race and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Philadelphia several times and very carefully. It was a great, even brilliant, speech. I appreciate Sen. Obama’s willingness to tackle a difficult subject and to explain his complex reactions to some of the Rev. Wright’s sermons.

I personally regarded many of the Rev. Wright’s sermons as filled with hate words and bigoted generalizations based on race (in this case, all whites). One could even call them racist. His remarks post-Sept. 11 were nothing short of reckless and unforgivable.

I am convinced that there isn’t a shred in Sen. Obama’s being that shares these hateful or bigoted feelings. And I respect his strong words denouncing the views of a man for whom he has deep and genuine feelings of affection and loyalty, which I also respect.

But many people, including Obama supporters, may still have two questions that Sen. Obama’s speech did not sufficiently answer, at least in my opinion. And, for any Democrat whose priority it is to win back the White House in 2008, they need to be answered now — because, if Sen. Obama ends up the party’s nominee (I am a supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, D-N.Y.) — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will assuredly insist they be answered in the fall.

These two questions are:

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the “N” word and employed rhetoric and words similar to that used by members of the Ku Klux Klan, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

2. Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her campaign’s “Religious Advisory Committee”?

I hope my message gets to someone in the Obama campaign — or to a reporter traveling with the senator — who can persuade him to answer these questions directly. As I just wrote, he will have to do so — either now or perhaps in the fall.