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See all Swift Boat Watch entries here.
Who They Are: Judicial Confirmation Network
Purpose: The group supports conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. In this election, they oppose Barack Obama.
President: Gary Marx, former coalitions director for Bush-Cheney 2004 and Mitt Romney.
Funding: The group is a registered 501(c)4, funded through individual donations.
Cost of the Ad: $550,000 in a $1 million campaign.
Where It Ran: Michigan, Ohio, and nationally on the Fox News Channel through Friday, Oct. 10.
Claims: Tony Rezko, a slumlord who was convicted on 16 counts of corruption, donated money to Obama. Obama also associated with William Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground who planted a bomb in the Pentagon in 1972 and later said he "didn't do enough." The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for years, blamed the U.S. for the Sept. 11 attacks. If Obama "chose" these people as associates and backers, the ad suggests, how can we trust him to choose Supreme Court justices?
Accuracy: The majority of the facts in the ad are correct. Rezko started to donate to Obama's state senate campaign in 1995, although Obama recently gave Rezko donations to charity. Obama and Ayers worked together on the board of the same Chicago anti-poverty foundation for three years. Ayers, when he was a member of the Weather Underground, planted a bomb and later said it wasn't enough. Wright did say in a sermon that African Americans should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." But the ad is wrong to equate this statement with blaming the U.S. for 9/11. It was another controversial Wright statement—"America's chickens are coming home to roost"—that suggests the U.S. is partly to blame.
Background: The group was created in 2004 to help President George W. Bush's nominations get confirmed in the Supreme Court. The group campaigned heavily for Samuel Alito's confirmation.
Swift Boat Rating: 
Although the facts in the ad are essentially correct, suggesting that these associations have anything to do with Supreme Court nominations is a stretch.
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This presidential race is full of celebrity look-alikes. Hillary Clinton and Star Trek's Tasha Yar. Fred Thompson and Javier Bardem. But rarely does someone intimately involved in the race look exactly like someone else intimately involved in the race. Behold the eerie resemblance of new Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr to America's most famous pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
Other things the two men have in common: outspoken personalities, a love of TV cameras, and a roughly equal chance of winning the presidency.
Thanks to Slate's Bill Smee for spotting the resemblance.
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Crackpot theories abound in this news cycle, but one of ours—that Rev. Wright’s resurgence may end up helping Obama—could actually have some truth to it.
Just today, former DNC Chairman Joe Andrew switched his allegiance from Clinton to Obama. The main reason, he says, is that dragging the race out hurts the party. But he has other reasons, too:
“He has shown such mettle under fire,” Andrew said. “The Jeremiah Wright controversy just reconfirmed for me, just as the gas tax controversy confirmed for me, that he is the right candidate for our party.”
If superdelegates were looking for an opportunity to swing to Clinton, the return of Wright should have been just that. But the trickle still favors Obama. Since Pennsylvania, Obama has won 11 supers to Clinton’s six. Since Ohio and Texas, the numbers are 35 and 14, respectively. Clinton’s ever-shrinking superdelegate lead is now 20.
Wright has obviously hurt Obama overall. But he has also given Obama the opportunity to prove that he can weather disaster—twice, and in two different ways. Now it’s harder to argue, as Clinton has, that Obama hasn’t been “vetted.” Not that the “vetting” has revealed anything whatsoever about what kind of president Obama would be. But that’s not the point. The point is he has survived controversy, which, for better or worse, is as important to becoming president these days as compelling policy ideas.
Granted, Andrew’s rationale for endorsing Obama is just one guy’s take. And it clearly wasn’t the deciding factor in his decision to switch. But it does suggest that Wrightgate has a silver lining in the eyes of superdelegates.
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In a press conference today, Barack Obama pronounced himself "outraged" and "saddened" at "the spectacle" of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s recent remarks alleging that the government invented AIDS, equating U.S. military efforts abroad with terrorism, and defending Louis Farrakhan’s denunciation of Zionism. "I do not see the relationship being the same after this," Obama said. On a personal level, it’s pretty sad—the presser looked painful. Politically, though, Wright may have done Obama an inadvertent favor. Obama won praise last month when he carved out a nuanced view of his relationship with Wright ("I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community"), but as time went on, this ambivalence dogged him. Hillary seized the moment to assure voters that Wright "wouldn’t have been my pastor," John McCain overcame an initial reluctance to attack Obama about Wright, and GOP state parties in North Carolina and Mississippi used the issue against down-ticket Dems endorsed by Obama.
Now Wright has forced Obama to put greater distance between the two men. If both the Rev. Wright and a bus had been on hand, Obama may well have physically thrown him under it. It will now be harder for Obama’s opponents to accuse him of making excuses for the excitable pastor. They’ll have to shift to asking why it took Obama so long to have this Sister Souljah moment. But that’s better than the alternative.
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After his speech today at the National Press Club, Jeremiah Wright was asked by the moderator whether he honestly believes, as he said in one of his sermons, that “the government lied about inventing the AIDS virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” That claim (which Bill Moyers inexplicably failed to ask Wright about in his April 25 interview) has been the weirdest of his various inflammatory claims.
Rather than address the substance of the question, Wright said, “Have you read [Leonard G.] Horowitz's book Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola”?
The Horowitz book, published in 1996, argues that the U.S. government created the AIDS and Ebola viruses in the course of performing cancer research on monkeys. Its author also wrote Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, a book that purports to reveal “Bible codes hidden for 3,000 years that have major implications for personal and world healing,” according to his Web site. Horowitz doesn’t believe in Darwinian evolution, either, and he claims to be descended from Moses and King David.
Wright’s allegation about AIDS has no factual basis, of course, but medical experimentation on black Americans is well-documented. Wright today cited the Tuskegee experiment—a syphilis study in which the U.S. Public Health Service failed to treat 400 syphilitic black men in Alabama for 40 years—as an example. From there, he leapt to the conclusion that “our government is capable of doing anything.” Juliet Lapidos noted in a March 19 “Explainer” that nearly 27 percent of African-Americans believe that the AIDS virus was produced in a government lab, and 16 percent think it was created to control the black population.
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Barack Obama has been trying to keep the Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of the spotlight for a long time now. As far back as February 2007, he rescinded an invitation for Wright to deliver the invocation at his presidential announcement.
But now Wright is pushing back, closing his media tour today with a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Needless to say, this isn’t exactly the Obama campaign’s dream. From their perspective, any attention on Wright is bad. Obama has been struggling to win over working-class white voters—the last thing he needs is a media-driven refresher on his greatest liability. And indeed, Wright’s comeback may hurt Obama. But in the long run, it’s likely to help the candidate more than hurt him. Here’s how:
The YouTube ratio. Right now, Wright is defined as that guy you saw in that YouTube clip or looped on MSNBC. Naturally, it’s always his most heated remarks that get repeated. The more people see Wright in other contexts—on Bill Moyers, at the NAACP, at a conference of ministers—the less they’ll associate him with those initial images. It doesn’t hurt that when he tries, Wright can be charm itself.
Distance helps. In his interview with Moyers, Wright argued that Obama has to say certain things because he’s a politician. On the one hand, that argument makes the senator sound dishonest. But it also highlights that Obama and Wright are in different lines of work. As Wright said today, after Nov. 5, he’ll still be a pastor. He also challenged the idea that he’s Obama’s “spiritual mentor”—he uttered the phrase in a mockingly overdramatic voice. Rather, he said Obama is one of his members. That’s it. The more he distances himself from Obama, the more voters can see them as separate people with separate views.
The comeback kid. Wright may not be a politician, but he has a politician’s quickness—a quality that makes him remarkably entertaining to watch. When he was asked at today’s event how he feels about being an American, he diffused notions that he’s unpatriotic: “I served six years in the military,” he said. “How many years did Cheney serve?” When the moderator asked him to respond to Chris Rock’s joke that Wright is a “75-year-old black man who doesn't like white people—is there any other kind of 75-year-old black man?” Wright had the perfect retort: “That’s just like the media. I’m not 75.” (He’s 66.) It’s moments like these that could right Wright.
Changing the subject. Just as Obama turned the conversation away from Wright’s words with his race speech, Wright today tried to refocus the attacks on him as “attacks on the black church.” He discussed the evolution of black Christianity from the brush harbors where slaves convened to worship out of slaveholders’ sight through to the liberation theology of the 1960s. He reframed his own famous remarks as part of this tradition: “It is not bombastic, it is not controversial. It is just different.” This argument doesn’t excuse his most questionable comments—like, say, his claim that the AIDS virus was some government plot (which he utterly failed to address when asked about it at today's NPC event)—but it does explain the tradition from which he descends.
Better now than in October. The furor over Wright so far is nothing compared with what Republicans will drum up in the fall. John McCain announced yesterday that despite hinting that he’d leave the Wright issue alone—he asked the North Carolina GOP not to air an ad denouncing Obama and Wright—he now thinks Wright is fair game. So much for the civility race. Given that, it’s better for Wright to fight back and soften his image now than to allow his current image to calcify over the next six months. If he can go from Obama’s crazy minister to Obama’s controversial but thoughtful and witty minister, that will be a huge step in pre-empting the GOP onslaught.
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It’s become the accepted logic of this race that if a surrogate says the wrong thing, you "denounce and reject" them, fire them from your campaign, return their money, and toss your drink in their face at parties. Until today.
Don’t get me wrong, Obama slammed Wright’s words. He denounced the reverend’s use of "incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
But Obama refused to throw Wright under the bus. (Wright did sever his official ties to the campaign, however.) Instead, Obama distinguished between the words and the man. That doesn’t seem particularly new—smart people are often forgiven for saying dumb things. But the assumption in this election has been that if someone embarrasses you, they have to go. No exceptions. Geraldine Ferraro, Samantha Power, Bob Johnson, Bill Shaheen—so many people got axed along the way that rejection became the norm. Hillary Clinton immortalized the rule by insisting in a debate that Obama "reject and denounce" Louis Farrakhan, who had praised Obama.
By defending Wright, you could say Obama rejected the Reject-and-Eject Rule. Instead, he executed a deft rhetorical pivot: All at once, he distanced himself from Wright's words, embraced Wright as a person, and held him up as an example of the American attitudes that need changing. For the past week, his campaign worried that people would see Wright as representing Obama. So Obama flipped the story, arguing that Wright actually represents America. A flawed, twisted America, but a real one nonetheless. He sums up the trouble with Wright like this:
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of [its] own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Notice how he incorporates Wright’s own quote—"the audacity of hope"—into the prescription for his (and America’s) own rehabilitation.
The idea behind Obama’s speech is that some remarks, and therefore some people, are too complex simply to accept or reject. He cast Wright not quite as a victim but as a product of his times: "For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years." To simply reject Wright would be to neglect the root causes behind his words. Obama always talks about ushering in a new kind of politics—the reject-and-eject rule can be the first assumption to go.
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Here’s a question: Who doesn’t have a crazy, wingnut, off-message preacher supporting their campaign?
Right now, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is getting the most attention for, among other things, his statements that the U.S. government caused the AIDS virus; a speech in which he said, “God damn America”; and his less-than-kind words about Hillary Clinton. Obama has distanced himself from Wright in general terms but hasn’t denounced specific statements.
But Obama’s not the only one. Clinton has her own spiritual adviser in the Rev. Bill Graham, who, while generally respected, has made remarks about Jews and the media that wouldn’t endear Clinton to voters. (Their connection hasn’t been an issue on the campaign trail so far.)
Even McCain has embarrassing pastors in his life—more than one, in fact. Earlier this week, McCain “condemned” the words that John Hagee “apparently wrote”—Hagee has said some ugly things about gays, Jews, and Catholics. But McCain said his remarks may have been “taken out of context.” Meanwhile, the Rev. Rod Parsly, an Ohio televangelist whom McCain has called a “spiritual guide,” wrote in one of his books that Islam is a “false religion” predicated on “deception,” David Corn reports. Not exactly part of McCain’s campaign platform.
So, given that each candidate has an embarrassing pastor, shouldn’t there be a stalemate? As Ambinder points out, the McCain campaign can’t ding Obama for Wright’s words—as it implicitly did in an e-mail today—without expecting to be repaid in kind.
My guess is that for McCain, it’s worth it. The Arizona senator has had a bumpy relationship with evangelical leaders—don’t forget his “agents of intolerance” quip—and he probably calculates that it’s better to have these guys on his side, controversy and all, than to lose them and their supporters. Plus, there’s a big difference between his evangelical endorsements and Wright’s proximity to Obama. (Wright married Barack and Michelle, and gave Obama the title of his second book.) If it comes down to a guilt-by-association competition, McCain probably thinks he would come out on top. Clinton should feel somewhat more comfortable denouncing Wright—Billy Graham, whatever his past statements, isn’t exactly controversy incarnate. Still, her campaign is so far withholding judgment.
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Is Jeremiah Wright untouchable?
Barack Obama’s minister, who leads the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and who coined the phrase "the audacity of hope," has said some controversial things over the years. But new videos of his sermons, purchased and reported on by Fox News, could up the ante. Especially the one in which he goes after Hillary: "Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty," Wright said.
Obama has distanced himself from Wright in the past, comparing him to "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with," but he hasn’t severed ties. (Wright serves on his African-American Religious Leadership Committee.) In fact, the Obama campaign doesn’t seem to have done anything to restrain Wright, or at least not successfully: He delivered the "Hillary" speech on Jan. 13 of this year.
Curiously, though, Clinton hasn’t spoken out. After the resignations of Samantha Power last week and Geraldine Ferraro yesterday, you’d think both campaigns would have a hair trigger when it comes to insults. Clinton was also adamant that Obama "reject and denounce" Louis Farrakhan. Wright hasn’t insulted entire groups of people like Farrakhan did, but, still, why give him a free pass? Also, it’s not just about Hillary’s pride. Wright may have violated tax code rules that prohibit churches from participating in political campaigns. It’s unclear whether the IRS will take action, but a rival campaign could legitimately gripe about it.
Three theories on why Clinton is holding back: 1) She doesn’t want to start a race war—at least not right now. Ferraro did enough damage by claiming she was being attacked "because I’m white." To go after Wright would look as if they’re trying to push the same narrative. 2) Wright is enormously popular. It’s not as if Hillary is going to be making inroads on the African-American vote anytime soon—Obama won 91 percent of blacks in Mississippi—but she’d rather not piss off people whose vote she needs in the general. 3) Wright is right. However inflammatory his rhetoric, his basic case against Hillary—that she doesn’t understand the American black experience in the way Obama does—is irrefutable. "Hillary Clinton has never been called a nigger," he said in one video. And it’s something Clinton would rather not draw attention to. While his words were disrespectful, they weren’t necessarily wrong.
If Clinton does in fact come out and condemn Wright, it will be Obama’s purest test of loyalty vs. exigency. It’s one thing to distance yourself from a friend and quietly ask him to tone it down. It’s another to throw him under the bus.
Update 2:55 p.m.: Instaputz points out a fourth possible reason for Clinton to hold back: Her own pastor's unseemly remarks.