Historical campaign both baffles and delights

If you've been following the Democratic primary season closely you'll notice that it's turned out to be a long (very long) roller coaster ride. Intense, wonderful, disheartening — even outrageous — week after week. With 24/7 cable networks in full political mode, every state vote has been scrutinized and parsed, pundits appearing en masse to offer up analysis.

As if the season were constructed along countless fault lines, there have been small quakes and then aftershocks that have rattled the campaigns, specifically those of the last two standing: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It seems ages ago that Hillary rolled out the "kitchen sink" strategy in Texas, deciding to go negative — placing into political arcana the now famous 3 a.m. phone call ad. That coincided with the commander in chief comments by the Clinton campaign, wherein Hillary's new best friend was John McCain. In Penn. there was Obama bowling, Hillary throwing back whiskey shots with beer chasers (Rocky Balboa music in the background) while emphasizing her hunting bona fides, and Obama commenting on rural America's bitterness while clinging to guns and religion. It all seems so long ago. But then this democratic primary seems like the never ending story.

One of the most complex and difficult eruptions was Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright. Grainy video of his fiery sermons surfaced showing Wright preaching at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. In several edited film clips paraphrasing, he yelled, "Not God bless America, but God damn America!" Wright went on to make statements that suggested that AIDS in the black community was caused by the U.S. government, citing the reprehensible 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiments performed on black sharecroppers beginning in 1932, and referred to 9/11 as America's chickens coming home to roost.

Suddenly Rev. Wright's comments became Obama's comments. And race was injected into the primaries, something Obama had hoped, perhaps naively, to avoid.

But in America, the issue of race — its history and complexity — are part of the fabric of our society, and Wright's sermons quickly became fodder for not only the right-wing pundits but the Clinton campaign. Hillary said something to the effect that you can't choose your family, but you can choose your pastor and she would have walked out of the church immediately.

Many insisted that Wright's words were not Obama's words: he did not subscribe to them, and to make him accountable was to determine guilt by mere association. Objectively it was not fair. But the Wright story had legs, and finally, in response, on March 18, Obama delivered a speech titled, "A More Perfect Union," that was a defining moment in his campaign. It was a measured invitation for the press and the public to consider anew an issue that has shrouded our past. The hope was that his speech would put to rest the rancorous linkage between Obama and the words of Wright. For a time it seemed to do just that, perhaps with the exception of the Fox News Network.

Recall that while Obama was trying to put the Wright episode behind him, Hillary was spinning a fantasy of landing in Bosnia as first lady, running from the plane under sniper fire, head down, weaving back and forth until she and her party could jump into waiting cars and make their escape. She told this story in great detail over a period of months. Finally, video tape was uncovered by reporters who had accompanied her which shows a completely different scene with school children waiting on the tarmac. No danger. No sniper fire. No race to safety.

And yet, while the sniper story was a complete fabrication, Clinton's mendacity never gained the same traction as the comments by "Obama's pastor." The question is why?

Is Obama held to a different standard than his fellow candidates, and does it have anything to do with our national anxiety about race and angry black men? Is something else at work here? Something elusive and seemingly inaccessible?

Consider the recent endorsement of John McCain by Rev. John Hagee, pastor of the 16,000 member Corner Stone Evangelical Church in San Antonio, Texas. McCain has embraced Hagee (literally), and when questioned insisted he welcomed the reverend's support. Hagee has made statements every bit as outrageous as Wright, yet neither the press nor the public have seemed particularly agitated.

Hagee, as reported on the Huffington Post, has said that the Catholic Church is the "Great Whore," a Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years. He has speculated that Hitler joined the Catholics in constructing a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.

Regarding women, Hagee is quoted as saying the only difference between a woman and a snarling Doberman pinscher is lipstick. He stated that the feminist movement today is throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family. He opined in the Post that all hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. He believes that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, hence the flooding. He believes America was attacked by terrorists because of its policy toward Palestine. He believes in miraculous healing, absolute authority of scripture, and that Muhammad was a man of war. He is apocalyptic in his theology.

There is a film clip on line of Hagee making at least one of the above statements. So why has McCain, and by extension Hagee, received a pass?

Are we more comfortable with white brimstone evangelicals than with fiery black preachers? How do we explain it? How do we explain the almost fearful scrutiny given Obama? Or the willingness to believe he is an elitist and out of touch, given his personal story? But then, how do we explain the unexpected effort by Rev. Wright, ten days before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, to bring down his own parishioner, Barack Obama, the first viable black candidate for the presidency?

How do we even begin to explain his speech before the NAACP (to a standing ovation) followed the next day by a caricature-filled appearance before the National Press Club? An abundance of ego? An abiding jealousy regarding the rise of a black man from a different time who was not raised in the crucible of civil rights and Jim Crow? A black man who did not possess the residual, simmering anger born of memories of injustice and slavery?

But then how do we understand the comments of Bill Clinton regarding "playing the race card" (against him by Obama) and his comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson?

There has been no election like this one. Ever. And there will likely never be another. It's both historical and complex — and at times defies understanding.