Barack Obama has another “pastor problem,” one Father Michael Pfleger, a white Catholic priest familiar to Chicago‘s extensive network of radical black liberationist theology proponents. Obama quickly disavowed Pfleger’s sermon on Hillary Clinton and white supremacy, which was delivered at the senator’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ. Pfleger thus joins Trinity’s retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s longtime pastor and friend, made famous for imploring the divine damnation of America. Obama’s third friend of note, the former SDS Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers, is another product of the Hate America Theology School of Revolution. He now shapes public education curriculum as vice president of the American Education Research Association and says he only regrets not planting more bombs in places like the U.S. Capitol. Obama has disavowed Ayers’ views, too, noting that he was only eight years old when the SDSer was making bombs, not sense.
Fairly or not, the issue of Obama’s associations with these avatars of anti-American hate and racial divisiveness isn’t going away any time soon. So what of the question of whether a presidential candidate’s friends and associates are a legitimate factor in weighing fitness for the highest office in the land? Obama is not alone in having such a problem. A major factor in former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani‘s failure as a Republican presidential candidate was his relationship with former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Shortly after President Bush nominated Kerik as federal Homeland Security Secretary at Giuliani’s suggestion, voters learned the nominee was linked to a trucking company with organized crime ties. Giuliani initially denied knowing of those ties, then admitted otherwise. The New York Times said the incident raised serious questions about Guliani’s judgment, including “how a man who proclaims his ability to pick leaders came to overlook a jumble of disturbing information about Mr. Kerik.”
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Obama supporters can rightly respond to the Kerik illustration that their man hasn’t nominated Pfleger, Wright or Ayers for any public post. They can also note that, unlike Giuliani, Obama was not a businesspartner of any of the three. Nor did he endorse their views by recommending any of them for high public office. Obama has explicitly rejected the views of his problem friends. All true but also not the key issue here. The question is whether voters can rightly assume that the people a candidate chooses to associate with over a long period of time reveals anything significant about what that candidate actually believes, as opposed to what he says he believes. Put otherwise, does a carefully worded statement issued under campaign pressure count as heavily as the choice of long-term association? A healthily skeptical voter should not be deemed unreasonable for choosing the latter.
