Barack Obama will make a speech tomorrow in an attempt to climb out of the kettle he is in.  From The Politico:

This is not promising.  It is no caricature of Rev. Wright that is the problem.  It is the things that the Reverend flamboyantly said.  Worse, it sounds like Obama is going to try to bury the Wright stuff in a lot of pious reflections about race and religion.  That won't do. 

There is a possible defense of Reverend Wright's outrageous anti-Americanism, and of Obama's tolerance for it over twenty years, that may work.  If Obama is as smart as everyone says he is, he will use it.  Clarence Thomas once described how he asked a white companion to call a cab for him.  He is a member of the United States Supreme Court, but because he is Black, he has a hard time getting a cab to stop.  That sort of daily frustration must surely take its toll, especially on those Black Americans who have been most successful. 

Maybe the Trinity United Church of Christ is the place a lot of successful people, like Barack Obama, go to vent their frustration.  Sure the Pastor's rhetoric is over the top, but maybe no one in the congregation really takes it seriously.  Maybe the Sunday sermon is just a moment to vent.  Monday to Saturday the doctors and lawyers and politicians do their part to make America work, all the while suffering the ridiculous burdens of racism.  On Sunday they get to pretend that they can reject America, "middleclassness," White people, and who knows what else. 

I am not sure if this works.  Can we really risk a President who needs to believe, once a week, that America is the Great Satan?  It would also mean discrediting Pastor Wright and all he stands for, and lets face it, this is as much a part of the African American political heritage as hostility to Britain is of my Irish heritage.  But it might be Senator Obama's only solution to his problem. 

And the problem is very big.  Here is how Michael Crowley at the New Republic describes it:

I am certainly in no position to say that that anger and alienation is not justified.  But the American Presidency, with its nuclear weapons and all, might not be the best place to work it out.  Tommorrow, Obama has his work cut out for him.