Lets see Obama attended this church for 20 years, donated to the church, the pastor married him, baptized his children, he wrote about Pastor Wright in his book The Audacity of Hope( in which he calls Wright his mentor).
Obama has a law degree from Harvard; therefore, he must know about the Federal Rules of Evidence. As such, he must also know that you can use character evidence to impeach a witness.
The classic law school example goes something like this:
Witness: I’ve known the Defendant for 20 years, and he is an honest person.
Opposing Counsel: Were you aware that 5 years ago the Defendant was convicted of fraud?
This character evidence does not go toward proving the Defendant committed the crime at issue; it goes toward discrediting the Witness’ statement because he is unaware of the Defendant’s fraud conviction, which is a crime involving dishonesty.
So let’s apply this to Obama’s situation:
According to Obama, he visited numerous churches before selecting the one led by Pastor Wright. He has regularly, though not perfectly, attended this church for at least 20 years. He was baptized into this church. He and his wife were married within this church. His children were baptized into this church. For at least two decades, he has taken spiritual guidance from this church. He has even written a book inspired by Pastor Wright.
Every truly spiritual person I know values their spirituality much more highly than they do the material world. One would think that before committing yourself so thoroughly to such an ultimately important path – a path that should guide your worldly actions and determine your fate in the hereafter – that you would want to know as much as possible about the person who has inspired you, baptized you, married you to your wife, baptized your children, and gives you spiritual guidance.
And now Obama claims that he wasn’t aware of Wright’s beliefs.
Seems like we are left with two conclusions:
1. Even after 20 years, in which he committed his and his family spiritually to this church, under the inspiration of Pastor Wright, he somehow failed to grasp the kind of person Pastor Wright is and what Pastor Wright believes. Like the Witness in the example above, he really doesn’t know what Pastor Wright is about.
This is an incredible admission: Clueless for over 2 decades about a matter of greater personal importance than the worldly affairs of politics. One shudders to think about whom else Obama would so devoutly trust in the lesser arena of politics to guide him, where Obama would have less incentive to do as thorough a job of inquiry than he did in the spiritual realm.
or
2. Obama really wasn’t clueless for over 20 years. Given that he has assembled a top-notch team that has propelled him to the lead in the Democratic Party nomination process, it seems doubtful that he’s a clueless person on important matters.
Whichever conclusion is correct, both are unsettling.
Absolutely. The two are in no way mutually inclusive.