Can we finally just put Jeremiah Wright behind us and focus our attention elsewhere?

Wait, let me channel my inner Barack and try that again.

YES WE CAN finally put Jeremiah Wright behind us and look forward now that Obama firmly has placed his former pastor beneath the bus and backed over him once or twice.

Obama's Sister Souljah moment this week at last clears a path for us to let Wright-gones be Wright-gones and return to a more civil time when our political skirmishes at least appeared to make surface sense.

Obama had hoped to avoid completely distancing himself from his longtime minister. His now historic "A More Perfect Union" speech on race was in large part an effort to divest himself of Rev. Wright's rhetorical baggage, while not altogether disown the man.

That Easter week in Philly, Peter the apostle could have learned a lesson or two about deference to your spiritual mentors. St. Peter may have thrown Jesus under the camel and thrice denied his Lord, but Obama merely disavowed his pastor's remarks without tossing out the remark-maker.

Back then Obama said: "I can no more disown [Wright] than I could disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother."

I wonder what Barack's white grandmother is thinking today.

Because when push came to shove and shove came to possibly derailing his push toward the White House, Obama handily reconciled any misgivings he'd had about disowning the right Rev. Wright. All the warm and fuzzy memories of Wright marrying the Obamas and baptizing their children had been doused with the chilly waters of political reality.

"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama insisted during a press conference. He added that Wright's opinions "certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well."

Take that Reverend Jeremiah Wright! Oh, and Grandma, you'd better watch your back too.

 It's not as if Rev. Wright left Obama many options beyond the nuclear one.  Recent Wright sightings had resurrected old concerns about Obama that the candidate and his handlers had hoped were long dead and buried - or at least on their way to a silent and painless death in the loneliest recesses of the white working class mind.

 Wright Aid '08 the preacher's comeback tour - televised on PBS, in Detroit at an NAACP event and in Washington, D.C. - was at best a mixed bag of occasional highlights and glaring lowlights. At worst it threatened to tear apart the very fabric of the Obama campaign. This man of the cloth was a recurring nightmare that Obama could find no way to shake - that is not until the question and answer portion of Wright's appearance at the National Press Club.

Wright's loutish behavior under the hot lights - he bobbed and weave, made faces and gestures behind the moderator's head and added fuel to what many already considered a blazing rhetorical fire - effectively forced Obama's hand. What else could Obama do than emphatically chastise Wright for "giving comfort to those who prey on hate?"

And Obama could deep-six Wright without seeming to abandon a man who he'd considered a sort of father figure. In that way, Wright had transformed from Obama's greatest liability to arguably his strongest political opportunity. The candidate had a permission slip to mercilessly and publicly cut ties with his former pastor and the signature on the slip read "Jeremiah Wright."

Which, if you're a skeptic, must lead you to ask: Doesn't this all seem just a bit too convenient? To phrase it Obamatically: I can't believe it's not bitter.

Sure, Rev. Wright is clearly upset - and rightly so - about his recent treatment in the press. Who'd want to be reduced to a couple of deceptive sound bites that belie their original context? Who'd want their star pupil to eschew him in public like some government concocted terminal disease? Who'd want to see their legacy of achievement obliterated like a Middle East nation under a Hillary Clinton bomb?

But was Wright (who presumably is no political slouch, having toiled decades on Chicago's South Side) so upset that he would become reckless or vindictive? What was the benefit of ending his silence? He had to know that his public appearances easily could torpedo Obama's presidential hopes - especially heading into the Indiana primary.

Is that how you treat a son? Any sensible person would answer "no."

On the other hand, Wright also must've known that his widely YouTubed jeremiads were hindrances for Obama. And not even the most brilliant speech on race would quiet the Wright controversy. What Obama needed most from his preacher was cover - a new conspicuously offensive development that would compel Obama to resoundingly and absolutely sever ties between the two men; otherwise his opponents would continue to seek political advantage by making everything all Wright.

The only man who could right the ship was Wright himself.

And he did that by being so over the top, so outrageous, so raucous as to leave Obama no other alternative than to in effect say: Now, you've gone too far for even me.

We may never know whether Rev. Wright's display this week was conceived for the purpose of helping Obama or whether he simply was motivated by arrogance, self-preservation or pride. In the end it shouldn't matter; the result should be the same.

Obama has made a public, clear and unequivocal break with Rev. Wright and his philosophies.  Case closed.

Sure, some may continue to question why Obama remained at Rev. Wright's church for 20 years and what took such a long time for the candidate to eventually divorce the preacher.

But at this point, that inquiry leaves a lot less favorable impression of the interrogator than it does of Barack Obama or Jeremiah Wright.

-Jonathan Clarke

May 2, 2008