WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama was Tuesday to address inflammatory language by his flamboyant former pastor as he bids to lance a searing controversy dogging his White House campaign.
The uproar around Chicago preacher Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his two daughters, has threatened to undermine the candidate's promise of racial healing.
A day after fighting running battles with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton over the Iraq war, Obama was to address supporters in Pennsylvania on the theme of "race, politics, and unifying our country."
The speech in Philadelphia came as the Democrats' nominating epic grew murkier still following the Florida party's decision not to repeat its January primary -- passing the buck back to Democratic headquarters over a scheduling row.
In an interview late Monday with PBS television, Obama said he would address Wright's remarks -- disclosed in newly unearthed videos -- that America had brought the September 11, 2001, attacks on itself because of its "terrorism."
The Illinois senator said the reverend's "stupid statements" had no place in his vision of a modern nation that is battling to overcome its racial divide.
In fiery sermons from recent years that Obama says he did not witness, Wright said African-Americans should sing "God Damn America" to protest their treatment at the hands of their white brethren.
Obama condemned the remarks on Friday and aides said that Wright, who has now retired from the Chicago church, had resigned from his honorary membership on the campaign's African-American Religious Leadership Committee.
In his PBS interview, Obama said it would have been "naive" to believe that race would never crop up in his primary battle against Clinton, just as gender was always likely to feature in a race featuring the former first lady.
"But we've got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what's different and that if we're going to solve any of these problems, we've got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before," he said.
Clinton aides, normally ready to jump at a chance to attack the Obama campaign, have studiously ignored the row over Wright -- but it has been daily fodder on conservative talk radio and television.
"That will be something for voters to assess and I don't have any comment on it beyond that," Clinton's communications director Howard Wolfson said.
Comparisons were being made between Obama's speech and former Republican contender Mitt Romney's December speech about his Mormonism, which itself was modeled on president John F. Kennedy's 1960 address on his Catholicism.
"It's one that he's reflected on personally with a great deal of intensity. He really feels that it's important to make this statement," said the senior senator from Illinois, Richard Durbin.
The senator, who is backing Obama against Clinton, said Wright's remarks and those by Democratic icon Geraldine Ferraro last week -- attributing Obama's success solely to his race -- were part of an old mindset.
"America is changing," Durbin told reporters.
"Barack Obama senses that change and wants to move beyond some of the accusatory rhetoric and some of the statements that have been made in the past to a more positive view about where our nation can go."
However, the rhetoric on the campaign trail remained as heated as ever as Clinton and Obama traded jabs Monday over Iraq ahead of the US-led invasion's fifth anniversary on Thursday.
They did join forces to attack the economic policies of President George W. Bush and likely Republican nominee John McCain, as Wall Street reeled from the government-backed fire-sale of crippled bank Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase.
Campaigning for Pennsylvania's primary on April 22, Clinton is battling for every delegate as she strives to overhaul Obama's narrow lead heading in to the Democrats' August convention.
The decision by Florida Democrats against a primary re-do clouded the picture and left the national party with the dilemma of how to seat delegates from the Sunshine State, and Michigan, at the Denver convention.
Clinton won the primaries in the two election battlegrounds. But the states were stripped of their Denver delegates because they held the contests too early.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
