Boy, the news cycle is so fast that you can’t even make a prediction before the whole thing comes and goes already.

So, at his press conference this afternoon dealing with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama said things like this:

“The person I saw yesterday [during Wright's speech at the National Press Club -ed] was not the person I met twenty years ago.”

“I believe [his statements] do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church … and they certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Rev. Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either.”

He said he had given Rev. Wright the “benefit of the doubt” when he (Obama) made his big speech on race in which he defended Wright.

Obama then went on to specifically reject the theory of the U.S. government creating AIDS to kill black people, to reject the idea of Louis Farrahkan as being one of the great figures of recent years, and to reject the comparison of U.S. military actions to terrorism.

So, he is basically saying, “I disown who Rev. Wright appears to be today.”

Does anyone really think that Rev. Wright is someone very different today from the person he has been the last couple of decades?

If not, what conclusion will voters draw? Either Barack Obama is so dull and insensitive as to not realize what Wright was about despite twenty years of involvement with him, or he’s lying. Either way, it’s not a great premise for the general election campaign.

Barack Obama had to say what he said today, to try and evade the creeping perception amongst Democrats that he is unelectable due to his association with Wright (compounded by his association with Bill Ayers). The establishment of that perception is Hillary Clinton’s best hope of beating him for the nomination.

It may be that the posture he has adopted today will be sufficient to gain him the nomination, in the end. But the question of why it took until April 29th, 2008, for Barack Obama to suddenly discover that he was “outraged” by the things that Rev. Jeremiah Wright says is certainly going to follow him into any general election campaign.

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