Did Obama's speech do what it needed to?

James Kirchick writes on The Plank over at TNR:

Charles Krauthammer has written, what I believe, the best distillation of Barack Obama's speech on race. Yes, it was a wonderful, even historic, address. But at the end of the day, I'm lost as to what it had to do with the crisis that prompted its delivery: Jeremiah Wright. Obama pulled off a masteful dodge-and-weave. He was faced with what I believed (and still believe) to be a near-insurmountable task -- the long overdue necessity of explaining his near 20-year close friendship with, financial support of, and intellectual affinity for a man who calls upon his congregants to "damn" America and who sympathizes with Hamas -- and artfully avoided it. Obama gave a sweeping speech about the history of race relations in America, the lyrical beauty and honesty of which few can doubt. Yet I'm still scratching my head asking how this speech addressed the specific issue of his affiliation with Pastor Wright.


He goes on to question, as many right-of-center writers and thinkers and critics at places like townhall.com and National Review are, why Obama changed the conversation from what they feel it should have been: a specific denunciation of each and every political view the pastor yelled about.

I think there are fair questions to be asked about Obama and this pastor, but, I would argue, it is ridiculous to assume Obama went to a church (this man was a lifelong non-believer, probably an agnostic) to get educated about government conspiracies and the problem with bombing Hiroshima. Much more likely, he had a genuine religious experience and/or saw that, whether it was because his wife liked the church or it would help him politically, this was an institution that in the short term would work for him.

As far as the question raised by Kirchick, who seems like several others to be concerned that Obama ducked and dodged and hasn't answered the American peoples' questions (and thus didn't accomplish in the speech what he needed to), I think the answer is right under their noses, and it's not what they think. While certainly some white folks will be put off by the pastor, and it may "blacken" him in the public eye for some, and the discussion of race may piss off blue-collar Reagan Democrats, the simple fact is that he did change the conversation and the narrative. That is exactly what he needed to do. There is not much to be done to defend going to that church, but by making this all about race, it compartmentalizes it and makes it much more plausible that by November people won't give much of a shit about Jeremiah Wright. It will be that "race scandal" or that "black pastor," but not much more. It essentially dodges, just like Kirchick says. That's what Obama intended to do. And I think he's succeeding.