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Published - Wednesday, April 09, 2008

EDITORIAL: Obama far from the first leader to flinch

By the TOMAH JOURNAL

REV. BILLY GRAHAM: This (Jewish) stranglehold (on the media) has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.

PRESIDENT NIXON: You believe that?

GRAHAM: Yes, sir.

NIXON: Oh, boy. So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.

GRAHAM: No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something ... A lot of Jews are great friends of mine, but they don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.

—Transcript from 1972 taped talk in Oval Office

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama isn’t the first leader who swallowed his whistle while in the presence of an offensive demagogue.

Obama, a Democratic candidate for President, is under scrutiny for sermons made by Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has attended services for the past 20 years. Wright has preached paranoid sermons accusing the government of engineering the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and conspiring to spread drugs and AIDS to racial minorities.

The object of Nixon’s paranoia was the Jews. Nixon initiated the above passage with a long, vicious rant against Jewish influence in the media and entertainment. Graham could have challenged Nixon or simply walked out in protest, but Graham relished his status as the official in-house spiritual advisor to the chief executive and knew that blowing the whistle, either privately or publicly, would terminate his unlimited access to the Oval Office.

As for Obama, he was reluctant to challenge the charismatic pastor who converted him to Christianity. Obama came to Chicago with no roots, no family and very little knowledge of the city he suddenly called home. It was Wright, more than anyone else, who bestowed upon Obama a sense of spirituality and community where none had existed before. Even as Obama’s political views evolved from Wright’s, Obama couldn’t summon the fortitude, until last week, to publicly contradict his mentor.

The dilemmas faced by Graham and Obama are familiar. How many of us in our own lives have remained silent when we should have spoken up? In today’s highly public world with videotape and Internet access, it’s virtually impossible for a leader to act as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In their public lives — the sphere where they attempt to inspire and motivate — Graham isn’t an anti-semite, and Obama isn’t anti-American.

They may have flinched in the face of demagoguery, but Billy Graham isn’t Richard Nixon. And Barack Obama isn’t Jeremiah Wright.