Those who are concerned about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright should ponder this: the candidate whose style most undermines hatreds of all kinds is Barack Obama. That is one key reason why I and countless others enthusiastically support him.
Jeremiah Wright's outlandish statements are by no means original. Outside the MSM, such hate filled thoughts and expressions have long permeated various black neighborhoods around the country, just as racist thoughts and expressions have long permeated various white neighborhoods around the country.
Those interested in fighting expressions of anger and hatred and isolation can always denounce or debate them. But denunciations and debate often do not deal with the core sense of anger. Every group has of aggrevied people has some core set of experiences and beliefs, and these experiences and beliefs are difficult to rebut.
The Obama approach is the one most likely to be successful. Inclusion of average citizens in the Obama coalition takes away a source of volunteers and fundraising for those consumed with counterproductive anger and hatred.
A rhetoric of inclusion, explanation, understanding, and mobilization undermines the intellectual isolation that so many of the most alienated suffer from.
In the 20th Century, the great American political communicators were William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. All of them were able to change the world by redescribing it so that reality as they saw it was comprehended by many of the most isolated and most alienated members of society.
In the 21st Century, the great political communicator is Barack Obama. His skill is the greatest longterm threat to the marketing of the speeches, tapes, and books of Rev. Wright and his ilk. The more Americans believe that constructive change is possible, the less the market will be for statements of hatred of any kind.
The average person is highly suspicious of great anger. Howard Dean found that the rebuttal to his well-justified anger at the decision to fight a war in Iraq and the failure of the Democrats in Congress to fully function as an opposition party--that Dean is a basically angry person, angry at all too many things--was remarkably effective. As Democratic National Chairman, Dean has worked to erase the image of anger associated with him.
Those who fear anger should seek to mitigate or eliminate it. Only Obama offers the realistic possibility of doing it. If Wright is now especially angry at Obama, a major component is likely that Obama's style is undermining the old regime of anger in parts various black communities.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that every person is entitled to his or her own opinion, but not to his or her own facts. But the effort to get people to focus on common facts and common realities requires enough trust to make it possible to pay attention to communication and enough respect to engage in dialogue with many people.
Four or eight years of Obama in the White House will undermine the politics of anger across the board, from the radical right to the radical left, and in isolated enclaves defined by ethnicity, failure, hardship, and diverse ideological critiques.
A President that people can believe, understand, and admire, can only increase the number and intensity of people who find that the United States is a country to believe in.