Sixteen years ago this weekend, Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was in real trouble, after ABC publicized excerpts of sermons delivered by Obama’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The video showed Wright, in the pulpit, rationalizing the 9/11 attacks as justified (“America’s chickens are coming home to roost!”) and blasting America as the “U.S. of K.K.K.A.”
Obama, who had built his campaign around the idea of unity, had attended Wright’s church for two decades, so there could be no suggestion that the Democratic candidate was unfamiliar with his pastor’s rabidly anti-American views. At the time, Obama had only the slightest advantage over New York Senator Hillary Clinton, so any whiff of scandal could lead Democratic voters to abandon the freshman Senator in favor of the former First Lady.
Liberal journalists, however, adored Obama, so over the next several days the media elite became the candidate’s personal rapid-response team. The …