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Hillary Clinton has been conspicuously silent regarding the political fallout created by Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I suspect two primary reasons for this:1) She may be adhering to what the late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater used to call “the Napoleonic maxim: Never interfere with the enemy when he’s in the process of destroying himself."
2) Senator Clinton’s campaign may be aware of her own vulnerability in this area.
This second point is much less obvious. I’m aware of it only because I’ve written a book on the faith of Hillary Clinton, during which I repeatedly encountered the often explosive situations involving Mrs. Clinton in African-American churches-situations utterly ignored by the media. One of my favorite examples took place at Emmanuel Baptist Church in New York City before the 2000 election, in which Mrs. Clinton was running against Congressman Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., for the U.S. Senate seat from New York.On that morning, Mrs.Clinton was introduced by co-Pastor Darlene Thomas McGuire.After McGuire issued the standard claim that she was not speaking for the church-so as to suggest that her tax-exempt church was not making a political endorsement, a claim that any honest ACLU lawyer would laugh right out of the courtroom-the Rev. McGuire issued a religious proclamation to her congregation: Hillary’s opponent was evil.Actually, Congressman Lazio was judged much worse than that. In a rousing hymn for the faithful, McGuire substituted Hillary’s opponent for no less than the Prince of Darkness. Immediately after claiming, “I’m not speaking for the church today,” McGuire led Hillary and the entire congregation in a unique rendition of an old-time hymn:
I told Satan, get thee behindI told Satan, get thee behind …Victory today is mine!
The good reverend then made a seamless transition, leading her flock in a revised second verse, belting out the new lyrics loudly and proudly:
I told Lazio, get thee behind!I told Lazio, get thee behind! …Victory today is mine!
The hymn, Victory is Mine, about Jesus Christ defeating Satan, was transformed into a political hymn about Hillary Clinton defeating Rick Lazio.This was a unique integration of church and state. Now, granted, Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said some crazy things behind the pulpit at Barack Obama’s church, but he has yet (to my knowledge) to dub Obama’s political challenger-Hillary Clinton-Lucifer.This display of Christian charity from the Religious Left was transcribed for political posterity by Beth Harpaz, a New York reporter who traveled with the Hillary campaign in 2000.To her credit, Harpaz-who shared a van with a group of sycophantic “reporters”/Hillary advocates who long ago tossed all objectivity out the window-figured that making a direct analogy between the Catholic Lazio and the Devil might be just a tad over the top, and stopped to ask the former first lady what she thought of the new lyrics.“She paused for a second,” recorded Harpaz, “then smiled and replied, ‘I love hymns.’ ”So did the press, which, uplifted by that old-time religion, was experiencing an old-fashioned conversion.Not one of the usual liberal pundits, like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank-who flipped his lid when President Bush in 2003 was introduced as “our friend and brother in Christ” by a group of fellow Christians-or The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, who accused Gov.Bush of “playing the Jesus card” when he cited Christ as his favorite philosopher in Iowa in 1999, complained about how Hillary Clinton’s supporters were comparing her opponent to Satan.For that matter, fast-forwarding to 2008, Barack Obama has not complained, either. Sen. Obama has not made an issue of such documented church moments by Sen. Clinton. Hillary Clinton (thus far) has gotten away with this kind of thing, including the occasions in which she was just as divisive as the Leftist pastors who fawned over her. One might recall the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2006-a day of national unity on race-when Sen. Clinton stepped to the pulpit of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem and claimed the Republican leadership was running the U.S. House of Representatives “like a plantation.”I’ve cited only a couple of examples.Beth Harpaz counted 27 churches in which Mrs. Clinton campaigned in the two months prior to Election Day 2000. There have been many more since then. The names of many, if not most, of those churches are known, as well as their pastors. One must wonder if the Obama campaign has looked into these churches to see if there is video of a Rev. Wright at one of them-one who could be used to embarrass Mrs. Clinton, if she seeks to make hay of Rev. Wright.I’m not being conspiratorial. This is how political campaigns think. And it may help to explain why Mrs. Clinton’s political team is not expressing outrage over the unhinged remarks by Obama’s pastor, including Rev. Wright’s nasty remarks (and body gestures) regarding Mrs. Clinton’s husband’s sessions with Monica Lewinsky, which surely must have made Bill Clinton’s blood boil when he (like the rest of us) first caught the video on Fox News. Mrs. Clinton herself no doubt hopes to keep the door shut on more than one church closet. Barack Obama is not the only Democratic frontrunner with some skeletons.
By Paul Kengor.He is professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa. His recent books include God and Hillary Clinton (HarperCollins, 2007) and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius, 2007).
This second point is much less obvious. I’m aware of it only because I’ve written a book on the faith of Hillary Clinton, during which I repeatedly encountered the often explosive situations involving Mrs. Clinton in African-American churches-situations utterly ignored by the media. One of my favorite examples took place at Emmanuel Baptist Church in New York City before the 2000 election, in which Mrs. Clinton was running against Congressman Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., for the U.S. Senate seat from New York.On that morning, Mrs.Clinton was introduced by co-Pastor Darlene Thomas McGuire.After McGuire issued the standard claim that she was not speaking for the church-so as to suggest that her tax-exempt church was not making a political endorsement, a claim that any honest ACLU lawyer would laugh right out of the courtroom-the Rev. McGuire issued a religious proclamation to her congregation: Hillary’s opponent was evil.Actually, Congressman Lazio was judged much worse than that. In a rousing hymn for the faithful, McGuire substituted Hillary’s opponent for no less than the Prince of Darkness. Immediately after claiming, “I’m not speaking for the church today,” McGuire led Hillary and the entire congregation in a unique rendition of an old-time hymn:
I told Satan, get thee behindI told Satan, get thee behind …Victory today is mine!
The good reverend then made a seamless transition, leading her flock in a revised second verse, belting out the new lyrics loudly and proudly:
I told Lazio, get thee behind!I told Lazio, get thee behind! …Victory today is mine!
The hymn, Victory is Mine, about Jesus Christ defeating Satan, was transformed into a political hymn about Hillary Clinton defeating Rick Lazio.This was a unique integration of church and state. Now, granted, Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said some crazy things behind the pulpit at Barack Obama’s church, but he has yet (to my knowledge) to dub Obama’s political challenger-Hillary Clinton-Lucifer.This display of Christian charity from the Religious Left was transcribed for political posterity by Beth Harpaz, a New York reporter who traveled with the Hillary campaign in 2000.To her credit, Harpaz-who shared a van with a group of sycophantic “reporters”/Hillary advocates who long ago tossed all objectivity out the window-figured that making a direct analogy between the Catholic Lazio and the Devil might be just a tad over the top, and stopped to ask the former first lady what she thought of the new lyrics.“She paused for a second,” recorded Harpaz, “then smiled and replied, ‘I love hymns.’ ”So did the press, which, uplifted by that old-time religion, was experiencing an old-fashioned conversion.Not one of the usual liberal pundits, like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank-who flipped his lid when President Bush in 2003 was introduced as “our friend and brother in Christ” by a group of fellow Christians-or The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, who accused Gov.Bush of “playing the Jesus card” when he cited Christ as his favorite philosopher in Iowa in 1999, complained about how Hillary Clinton’s supporters were comparing her opponent to Satan.For that matter, fast-forwarding to 2008, Barack Obama has not complained, either. Sen. Obama has not made an issue of such documented church moments by Sen. Clinton. Hillary Clinton (thus far) has gotten away with this kind of thing, including the occasions in which she was just as divisive as the Leftist pastors who fawned over her. One might recall the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2006-a day of national unity on race-when Sen. Clinton stepped to the pulpit of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem and claimed the Republican leadership was running the U.S. House of Representatives “like a plantation.”I’ve cited only a couple of examples.Beth Harpaz counted 27 churches in which Mrs. Clinton campaigned in the two months prior to Election Day 2000. There have been many more since then. The names of many, if not most, of those churches are known, as well as their pastors. One must wonder if the Obama campaign has looked into these churches to see if there is video of a Rev. Wright at one of them-one who could be used to embarrass Mrs. Clinton, if she seeks to make hay of Rev. Wright.I’m not being conspiratorial. This is how political campaigns think. And it may help to explain why Mrs. Clinton’s political team is not expressing outrage over the unhinged remarks by Obama’s pastor, including Rev. Wright’s nasty remarks (and body gestures) regarding Mrs. Clinton’s husband’s sessions with Monica Lewinsky, which surely must have made Bill Clinton’s blood boil when he (like the rest of us) first caught the video on Fox News. Mrs. Clinton herself no doubt hopes to keep the door shut on more than one church closet. Barack Obama is not the only Democratic frontrunner with some skeletons.
By Paul Kengor.He is professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa. His recent books include God and Hillary Clinton (HarperCollins, 2007) and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius, 2007).
http://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000006923.cfm
As in the days of Noah....
As in the days of Noah....
