A few weeks ago, when the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright first hit the front pages, I wrote a post defending Senator Obama. I argued that it was unfair to hold the Senator responsible for what his Pastor might have said from the pulpit. Cam and Jim argued vociferously that the Senator’s failure to break from his pastor suggested bad judgment.

On Monday, as the whole world knows, Rev. Wright gave a speech and answered questions at the National Press Club, in which he repeated and defended his most bizarre and offensive utterances. He was joined by a cast of hundreds, including representatives of the Nation of Islam, anxious to get behind his delusional, racist and hateful views.

Yesterday, Cam published a powerful and personal post just below. And if you haven’t read it, you really must do so at once.

Cam’s post got me thinking and reflecting on my earlier defense of Senator Obama (one I’ve repeated, by the way, to incredulous looks from friends over the past few weeks.) For me, this is the central point of Cam’s post:

I’m starting to wonder if your comments distancing yourself from Reverend Wright are really sincere. I’m also wondering if you were really that close with him to begin with. I’m wondering a lot of things about you, but it boils down to one concern: are you lying to us now, or were you lying to us all along about Reverend Wright? Either way, it would make you the worst kind of politician. You know the stereotype: slimy, oozing with contempt for the voters, willing to say anything to get elected. The exact opposite of how you present yourself, basically.

And I don’t know how you get beyond that Senator. You’re either A) the worst judge in character the world has ever seen or B) another lying politician who just wants to get elected and thinks Americans have the intelligence of tree stumps. Either way, when it comes to the content of your character… you fail. You could have walked out of that church at any point over the past twenty years. You could have used your big speech in Philadelphia to put to rest this issue, not claim the Reverend Wright as a member of your family. Because of your failure of character, you’re now merely following the conventional political wisdom instead of exhibiting true leadership and principle.

Having reflected on this, and heard Rev. Wright’s expanded views on Monday, my own concern is actually somewhat different. I’m now wondering if Barrack Obama is a racist the way his pastor evidently is.

Let me step back for a second.

The speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered in Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 is justifiably one of the most famous ever given. In it, he articulates his vision for race relations in America. The central passage won’t be unfamiliar to anyone:

Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

It’s this last point that has always had the strongest, most emotional impact on me. “They will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Dr. King said. For me, Dr. King’s ideal was simple and wonderful: that race would, someday, simply no longer be a factor. Some have called this the dream of a colorblind America.

At the time that Dr. King delivered his speech, white America had a long way to. In the speech, he focuses on the south, but the race riots of the later 1960s and 1970s revealed divisions in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington and almost every major city across the country.

I’d like to think that we’ve come a long way, but, to be sure, we haven’t achieved Dr. King’s dream.

For that, I increasingly point the finger at people like Dr. Wright, Al Sharpton, and others who try to channel anger and leverage hate and fear for their own personal gain. For me, they aren’t just holding back progress. They are actively contributing to a culture of racism that they claim to deplore. They aren’t after equality. And they are openly hostile to Dr. King’s dream that “little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” By implication, Dr. Wright and his ilk want to return America to the days of separation.

For me, Senator Obama seemed like just the opposite. Even though his political record suggests that he is a conventional liberal, his rhetoric was soaring and hopeful. His stark repudiation of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s approach to campaigning — refusing to campaign as a black man and instead propounding a vision of hope for all Americans regardless of race — was and is very appealing to me.

So it is, therefore, exceedingly difficult to resolve these views which Senator professes with his decision to sit for twenty or more years in the pews in front of a man who seems so full of hate.

On this basis, Cam wonders if Senator Obama is being insincere in his views or lying about his relationship with Rev. Wright.

Let’s consider, briefly, the implications of both possibilities.

If Senator Obama is being insincere, then we can assume that he shares his pastor’s views, at least on some level, but by definition, it’s impossible to know to what degree. That leaves me in a troubling quandary, because I certainly don’t want to put a paranoid hate-monger in the White House. (And to be clear, I’m not saying that he is. Just that it might be an open question.)

If Senator Obama is lying, and he contrived the depth of his relationship with Rev. Wright as a political convenience, perhaps to ingratiate himself with the black community in Chicago, his claim to be a “different kind of candidate” is revealed to be a simple falsehood as well.

In either circumstance, I am compelled admit that my earlier defense of the Senator was a mistake.

In the practical world of politics, however, Cam might be right when he suggests with a touch of irony that “we’ll be too distracted by American Idol and the price of gasoline to remember any of this come November.”

I certainly hope not. This episode may provide our first window into the real Barrack Obama, the man who might be our President. We would do ourselves a grave injustice if we manage to overlook it.

UPDATE: The first thing Mike Huckabee has said in this campaign that I agree with:

“[Obama’s] campaign is not being derailed by his race, it’s being derailed by a person who doesn’t want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country,” Huckabee told reporters. … “Jeremiah Wright needs for Obama to lose so he can justify his anger, his hostile bitterness against the United States of America,” Huckabee said.

Well said, Governor.