In the absence of a long and productive legislative career, Barack Obama has argued that his decisive advantage over his rivals is not experience, but judgment.
Back on March 18, Obama declared that we were being unfair in concluding Jeremiah Wright was “a crank or a demagogue” because we didn’t know him the way Obama did. We were reaching that conclusion based on “snippets” and “soundbites,” whereas he could take the full assessment based on a close relationship of 20 years or so.
He was, he assured us, in a better position to make a better judgment.
Today, Obama tells us, he doesn’t really know Jeremiah Wright at all.
And now, it seems, we’re in better position to make a judgment about Barack Obama.
UPDATE: Paraphrasing a reader’s suggestion, foreseeing an Oval Office address near the end of Obama’s first term: “The Prime Minister Ahmadinejad who ordered the nuclear strike on Tel Aviv yesterday… is not the same man I met in Tehran at our summit back in 2009.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mary Katherine Ham reports that someone is asking poll questions about Wright in North Carolina.