A Fresh Start: Obama and the Wright Controversy

As the Democratic primary campaign heads for the home stretch, it is clear that nobody is going to get a break. Any misstatement by Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is sure to be magnified. Any failure to look like a regular politician is certain to be equated with elitism.

Now in the wake of Barack Obama’s open break with his minister Jeremiah Wright Jr., a new set of questions arise: Will Obama be allowed to define himself on his own terms? Or will he be charged with guilt by association?

The next few days will provide an important indication if we will return to the era of Willy Horton and swift-boating or if we will make a fresh start. In this regard there is a gold standard to judge ourselves and the media by. It is the standard implicit in Barry Blitt’s New Yorker cover of March 17.

Titled, “I’ll Get It!” the cover shows Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in bed reaching for the same ringing red phone. In the background the hands on a grandfather clock tell us that it is three o’clock. Blitt’s cover was a spoof of Hillary Clinton’s successful “It’s 3 a.m.” ad that portrayed her as the candidate best qualified to deal with an emergency call in the middle of the night.

The ad originally caused a storm of controversy. In a New York Times op-ed, Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson charged Clinton with playing on racial fears because the ad focused on a sleeping blond child and, in his judgment, implied that the country was menaced by black crime. In The New Republic, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz then took Patterson to task, arguing that Patterson was distorting an ad that was about national security and in doing so playing the “race-baiter card.”

Blitt’s “I’ll Get It!” sidestepped the issues that the Patterson-Wilentz debated, but it did so in a way that was healthy, not escapist. Blitt took as his premise that at three in the morning Clinton and Obama would be equally startled by a phone call. Both would in turn answer the call immediately, and judging by the surprised looks on their faces, neither would have an automatic answer to the problem he or she faced.

The ad gently undermined Clinton’s claim that she was better qualified to deal with an emergency than Obama, but it did so in a way that did not viciously criticize her. She and Obama, Blitt’s cover implied, would have the same problems coping with a three-in-the-morning emergency that any conscientious president would.

What were Clinton and Obama doing in their pajamas in the same double bed? Were they kindred spirits? Were they secretly attracted to each other? Would they make a good presidential and vice presidential team? All these questions were left unanswered by Blitt. And well they should have been!

The charm and seriousness of Blitt’s cover lay in its reminder that politics can make vicious fools of us all and that we need to keep this perspective in mind. The great pity is that since Blitt’s cover first appeared more than a month ago, nobody has commented on Clinton and Obama with the same combination of wit and insight. The Wright controversy, for all its bitterness, carries with it an unexpected dividend. It gives everyone voting, everyone in the Clinton, Obama, and McCain campaigns, and everyone in the media a chance for a fresh start.

Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, is author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.