Obama world trip leaves personal controversies behind

"Thank you so much. I extend greetings from my pastor. He's like my priest. His name is Jeremiah Wright."

With those words, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama introduced himself at a Christian church in northern Israel. No one in attendance had ever heard of the Rev. Wright or his race-baiting and America-bashing comments. Few people even recognized Barack Obama.

That is because it was January 2006, not July 2008.

It was during Mr. Obama's first political pilgrimage to the Middle East that he delivered a warm message from his pastor in Chicago.

I was 10 feet from Obama when he mentioned Rev. Wright that day in Fassouta near the Lebanese border, but I hadn't heard of him either and since forgot that Obama had carried such a greeting 6,500 miles from his Chicago pastor.

It was only while researching for Obama's second trip to Israel that the quote jumped at me like a squirrel walking over hot coals.

As Mr. Obama jetted around the Middle East and Europe last week looking worldly and presidential, he talked about the next phase of tearing down walls between the United States and its allies, just as the Berlin Wall once tumbled.

The Rev. Wright flap, Obama's financial dealings and his relationship with Tony Rezko were all forgotten, almost as if the campaign had built a wall in the middle of the Atlantic to keep them at bay.

Even as the Obama campaign plane flew by convicted, corrupt businessman and political fundraiser Tony Rezko's birthplace in Syria, it was unlikely anyone noticed or cared.

There is only one message intended when your candidate meets with American military commanders running the Iraq war and with heads of state and is photographed arm in arm with the French president and standing in front of 200,000 Germans at a historic landmark: This person has moved on from parochial questions about personal faith and finances. In the new math of presidential political campaigns, time and distance equal memory loss.

As Mr. Obama returns to the domestic campaign trail this week, it seems unlikely that he will face a homecoming of old questions. Unless a new fissure occurs, the half-life of his whirlwind tour imagery will be well beyond the Democratic Coronation and maybe even Election Day.

Despite the great wall that now seems to cordon off Mr. Obama's past from the present, the quote delivered in Israel in 2006 should be evocative. No amount of denunciation will change the fact that Mr. Obama would probably not be where he is today if it wasn't for the Rev. Wright. Obama can reduce Wright to "an old uncle" who said things he didn't always agree with, such the preacher's oft-repeated claims that HIV and crack cocaine were government plots aimed at African-Americans.

But Rev. Wright's standing in Obama's success is undeniable.

Notable in Wright's rise and fall chronology:

• September 2001 - A Wright sermon suggests the United States deserved Sept. 11."We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he said.

• April 2003 - Wright said blacks should condemn the United States. "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing `God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America."

• July 2004 - An old Wright sermon provides the framework and inspiration for Mr. Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. Even though Obama hadn't yet been elected a U.S. senator from Illinois, that speech "The Audacity of Hope" spawned his presidential aspirations.

• January 2006 - Obama told group in Israel "Thank you so much. I extend greetings from my pastor. He's like my priest. His name is Jeremiah Wright."

• October 2006 - Obama's second book is published, using a Wright sermon as the title, "The Audacity of Hope."

• December 2007 - Promoting Obama in a sermon Rev. Wright said "Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a n-----."

• March 2008 - Wright's standard sermon fare and his relationship with Obama are the subjects of ABC News reports. Storm of bad press follows and public opinion polls begin to turn against Obama.

• April 2008 - As Wright controversy continues Obama said he "may not know him as well as I thought" and that Wright beliefs "aren't grounded in the truth."

• May 2008 - Obama resigns his 20-year membership in Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com