It's in the nature of campaigns to careen from the totally unexpected to the utterly unthinkable, but recent events in the presidential contest probably ought to be filed under the heading: "With friends like these."
By Friday, all three candidates had been forced to apologize for the offensive views of a prominent supporter. John McCain was first, when one of the evangelical ministers whose approval he has so assiduously courted turns out to have some inconvenient views. John Hagee, a prominent Texas televangelist, also happens to teach that the Catholic Church is "the whore of Babylon" and a "cult."
McCain, who appeared with Hagee on television to accept his endorsement, at first tried to brush off the matter. Better judgment -- and perhaps, consideration of the Catholic vote's importance -- ultimately prevailed, and the Arizona senator told the Associated Press: "I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."
Hillary Rodham Clinton was next up, when former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro told an interviewer: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Clinton tried several apologies and, Wednesday -- after Ferraro had resigned from the campaign's finance committee -- finally got it right: "I certainly do repudiate it."
It was Obama's turn Thursday, when, after a network television report, video clips began circulating of sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the recently retired pastor of the senator's Chicago church, Trinity United Church of Christ. In one, Wright raves: " 'God bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America. ..." In another, he fumes that the 9/11 attacks were a consequence of using atomic weapons against Japan and for U.S. support of "state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans."
Obama, who in other contexts has tried to compare Wright to a loutishly eccentric old uncle, told an interviewer that the quotes were the result of "cherry picking" the pastor's many sermons. By Friday, though, the senator and his campaign had begun to understand that his association with Wright is problematic in ways neither Hagee nor Ferraro were for McCain and Clinton. For one thing, the video clips of Wright's inflammatory homilies are caught up in the new media loop. They're all over the Internet, the cable news shows and right-wing talk radio. They have "gone viral."
