Andrew Sullivan asks the following question:
“What does it say that a leading Presidential candidate can boast of support from an institution that has a deep history of racism and religious bigotry? And what does it say of a candidate to cater to a man who once denigrated his fellow Americans?”
And he answers:
“The answer is that the candidate is putting power before decency…”
OK. He didn’t exactly write those words. I’ll admit I changed a few. But even in reading the original text where he rips Romney for supporting Bob Jones University and even mentions his detest of Bush for catering to them in 2000, the point gets made. To support a racist institution is, by inferrence, to support racism.
But neither Bush nor Romney as far as I can find, attended Bob Jones University, sent any of their children to Bob Jones University, ever gave one penny of financial support to Bob Jones University, etc. etc. Simply for speaking words of admiration Sullivan tarred these candidates through rather limited association with the racist past of BJU.
Contrast this with his support of Barack Obama who has a 20 year history of admiration, association and financial support for a church whose pastoral guide is a man who blasted racial, bigoted and unpatriotic speach from the pulpit. Sullivan excuses Obama by writing:
“I think that the kind of politics that ensures that someone’s pastor’s rhetoric trumps every other issue in a campaign is waning. Because many Americans understand that the country’s problems are really too deep for this kind of thing to be dispositive. Because Obama’s long record is transparently not in any way equatable with Jeremiah Wright’s worst moments on YouTube.”
Sullivan is fully in the grips of Obamamania. He is firmly an “Obamaist” if you will. His arguments are intellectually convenient. For a man who wrote:
“I had a conniption about Bush’s catering to BJU bigotry in 2000 and then swiftly forgot about it. I didn’t see it as the harbinger that it was: of a GOP rooted in religious prejudice, racial fears, and sexual panic. I’ve learned my lesson.”
the lesson obviously didn’t stick. Or it got in the way of his rush to elect a candidate who has described himself as a blank slate upon which others project their political hopes. Well, Sullivan’s hopes are in the Barack basket and now he must rescue the politics of the future by practicing the politics of the past. The story of Obama’s support of Reverand Wright is not going away. I fear Obama may be, as Sullivan titled his post, toast.
