Obama’s Pastor and Clintons’ Tactics Make Race a Central Issue
Obama’s Pastor and Clintons’ Tactics Make Race a Central Issue ~ by Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney (more by this author) Posted 03/19/2008 ETUpdated 03/20/2008 ET Outlook Race, studiously avoided by the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and subtly peddled by the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), has bloomed into a central issue in this presidential campaign thanks to the now-ubiquitous words of his mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This is bad news for Obama, but he is managing the development nearly as well as he can. National polls show a dead heat in the presidential election -- for both Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) v. Clinton and McCain v. Obama. But the cloud looming over the horizon is a financial crisis. The Federal Reserve's unprecedented intervention in financial markets to bail out Bear Stearns is intended to prevent the incipient panic on Wall Street from expanding into a depression. (See below). Amid the financial crisis with vast political implications,...