Not to beat a dead horse, but one of the unanswered questions of this campaign still baffles: Obama—faced with an implosion of his candidacy over the racist outbursts of his pastor—chooses not to apologize for, or dissociate himself from, the cause of his present catastrophe, that alone would restore his credibility and perhaps his momentum.

But instead Obama takes the occasion to save himself by giving a far-reaching speech, whose morally equivalent similes (grandmother, Ferraro, Reaganites, talk shows, etc.) and relativism (most don’t understand the protocols of the black church, Wright’s past good outweighs the present bad, etc.) opened up more controversies and are proving as amenable to bad sound bites as were Wright’s slurs.

So why promise to solve the problem, then don’t, but instead create even more problems?

Is it hubris? His inexperience due to a prior sheltered life among sympathetic enablers? Terrible advice and poor staff work? Assurance of the press’s ‘another Gettysburg Address’ treatment and adulation that suggested he can say almost anything and still be deified? Too deep an investment in the Wright church?

Do his handlers grasp that there is a reason (maybe even a connection) why even as a royal Anderson Cooper, the NY Times, or a Chris Matthews gush, his polls among those with pitchforks in places like Pennsylvania tank?

And does Obama realize that the last thing he needs right now is a real conversation on race that would deal by needs with disproportionate illegitimacy, drug usage, crime, the values espoused in rap music, anti-Semitism, and black racism—as well as undeniable long-standing white racial prejudice?

Such an honest discussion might well alienate his base of white elites and African-Americans that is rapidly becoming his only constituency—and is never held not because America is “afraid of talking about race” but because millions don’t wish to be demonized as racists for introducing unpleasant realities into the discussion.