GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION.

As I was eating breakfast this morning I watched Joe Scarborough and his co-hosts on Morning Joe discuss the inflammatory, hateful, and racist statements made by Sen. Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. While Mr. Scarborough and company were quick to denounce these statements and predicted problems for the Obama campaign they relentlessly restated over and over how they were sure that these statements did not reflect the beliefs of Sen. Obama himself. They were also quick to say that it would be unfair to infer any guilt by association regarding Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright. Commentators on other news shows were also quick to dismiss Mr. Wright’s hate speech as simply the statements of a passionate preacher.

I cannot object strongly enough to the reactions described above. When we as citizens are asked to evaluate candidates for public office we are under a specific duty to examine the people a candidate surrounds himself with, the people he seeks out for advice. This gives us an insight into the candidate’s judgment, and possibly even his philosophical outlook. Since we can’t look into the man’s heart we must take note of his actions as well as the company he keeps to gain a sense of the man. A man can’t pick his family but he can pick his advisors, and he has absolute discretion over which church he joins, what pastor he chooses to expose his wife and children to.

Mr. Wright tells us a lot about Sen. Obama. If you go over to Michelle Malkin’s sight you can access videos that show Mr. Wright damning America from his pulpit, accusing the government of purposely creating HIV to infect black children, and a host of other shockingly vile comments. This is the man that performed Sen. Obama’s marriage, that baptized his children, that provided the inspiration for his book. Apparently Sen. Obama had no problem taking his family to that house of hate to have his children instructed by this man. If Sen. Obama found the hate speech of Mr. Wright as disgusting as he should have he should have ended any association with that church and Mr. Wright the first time such garbage was uttered. He didn’t. He did make this man a member of his campaign and designated him as his spiritual advisor. NOTED!

Consequently, I find the argument that such guilt by association is unfair to be absolutely unconvincing. Candidates for office always parade a never ending line of celebrities, scholars, and statesmen to vouch for the candidate’s competence and superior electability. Candidates do this to benefit from their association with such luminaries. Just the other day on TV I saw several retired generals appear with Sen. Obama to vouch for his competence to be the next Commander in Chief. He has appeared with the former SgtMaj of the Marine Corps, SgtMaj Estrada, for the purpose of establishing his credibility on national security issues. Sen. Obama certainly wants to use his association with these retired military men to bequeath a certain gravitas. Well this works both ways. I find his long and close relationship with Mr. Wright far more revealing than a momentary stage appearance with a retired general.