What Were They Thinking?

I’ve known for a very long time that politicians were no smarter than average people, but this year’s presidential campaign is truly inspiring, as in, ”How stupid can they get?” If you tried to write a novel with characters behaving like the candidates, no one would believe it—and you would be derided as a lousy writer.

Obama knew more than a year ago that his connection with Rev. Wright would be a problem—he withdrew the invitation for Wright to do the invocation before he officially announced his candidacy—so what did he do? He made Wright a member of his religious advisory group—and he apparently continued to attend services at United Church of Christ, at least occasionally. What was he thinking?

Then the church began selling DVD’s of some of Wright’s incendiary sermons earlier this year—what were they thinking?

After ABC News showed clips from the sermons last week, Obama initially denied knowing of Wright’s opinions; that didn’t cool the fires, so he gave a speech Tuesday in which he contradicted his comments of last week. Obama also “threw his grandmother under the bus”—what was he thinking? Particularly because what he said about his grandma in the speech contradicted what he’d written about her in a book several years ago—what was he thinking?

John Fund, on Hannity and Colmes tonight, noted that Oprah had attended United Church of Christ for a while and had quit—and Wright had attacked her. Fund suggested that Obama stayed with Wright to avoid a similar attack that could have potentially cost him votes.

I wonder about Obama’s math skills—he could risk offending that percentage of blacks who agree with Black Liberation Theology (more on that below) by walking out of the church, or he could take the chance of offending a percentage of moderate white voters by going along with Wright’s outrageous statements. I have to wonder which is the larger bloc of voters. What was he thinking?