We have two accounts of how this Obama’s denunciation of Wright came about that don’t quite line up:
The first, from Marc Ambinder:
EARLY [Tuesday] MORNING, after a long day of campaigning, aides showed Barack Obama extended excerpts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jaunty and freewheeling press conference in Washington. Obama, the aides said, was deeply, visibly angry. Two said he “insisted” that he hold a second press conference today to unequivocally denounce Rev. Wright’s conduct and sever himself from Wright’s fulminations. Obama did not want to let Wright hijack his campaign any longer. Five days was enough.
The second, from Bob Novak:
“That is just terrible, absolutely dreadful,” a prominent supporter of Barack Obama said Monday morning after listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s screed at the National Press Club. He proposed to me that the presidential candidate at long last must denounce his former pastor, unequivocally and immediately. It took 28 hours after a tepid early reaction Monday, but Obama finally did it Tuesday afternoon.
Obama adviser Susan Rice, appearing on MSNBC immediately after the press club spectacle, was visibly unhappy as she disavowed any responsibility for Wright. Soon after, while campaigning in Wilmington, N.C., Obama hardly seemed exercised about Wright, saying merely, “He does not speak for me.” Advisers then urged the candidate to react more firmly.
He did so the next day, in Winston-Salem, N.C., calling Wright’s performance “divisive and destructive.”
If Ambinder’s account is accurate, Obama’s staff failed him. Wright’s press conference was completed about 10 a.m. eastern on Monday morning. Nothing Obama was going to do on Monday (and arguably this week), short of rushing into a burning building to rescue trapped orphans and puppies, was going to be bigger news than his reaction to Wright’s appearance. (It’s not like Obama’s staff can claim ignorance; Wright’s appearance had been carried live by all of the cable networks!) At the very least, somebody on Obama’s staff needed to get a transcript in the candidate’s hand as soon as possible on Monday.
Obama himself erred, it would seem, by reacting late Monday without having seen Wright’s appearance at the press club. The candidate’s tepid reaction is at least understandable, if indeed he had not seen Wright’s strutting performance and heard or read his answers on U.S. government creation of the AIDS virus, etc.
Nonetheless, Daniel Henninger asks a good question… where were/are all of Obama’s surrogates? Why aren’t they rushing to his aid, taking to the airwaves and the op-ed pages, to argue that Wright is wrong when he claims to be representative of the black church, that Obama was right to effectively disown Wright, or that the pastor had betrayed Obama by behaving in such a manner on the national stage?
UPDATE: From Campaign Spot reader Dave:
You called it — where is Obama’s staff? And where are his friends? Does he even have them? There’s nobody there who could have carried a message/threat to Jeremiah, “Help a brother out and go on vacation until November 5th?” Nobody to say, “Barry, just wear the damn lapel pin,” and assign an intern to follow him around with a pocketful of spares. Nobody willing to go out and say, “Jeremiah Wright doesn’t speak for me, either?”. Face it, if somebody went in front of the National Press Club and dissed Hillary big-time, the Clinton Spin Machine would be in overdrive with rebuttal, revenge, and more revenge.