In my initial assessment of the text of Barack Obama's discussion of Pastor Wright and race in America, I argued that the speech was courageous by conventional political standards, but also contained evasions. Let me now identify what I think is the main evasion.

Obama attempts to put Wright's controversial and divisive remarks into context by considering the man's life. He explains:

Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation. . .came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. . . .For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. . . .And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.

But to understand is not to endorse, or even necessarily to excuse. Thus, Obama continues:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

So far, very good.

But here's the problem. If Reverend Wright was so profoundly mistaken about this key issue -- the "genius," of America and its capacity to change -- why did Obama embrace Wright's church? Why did Wright become his spiritual adviser and "uncle" figure? Why was it Wright who was able to lead Obama to Christ? Why not some other religious figure who understood the full vision Obama is now presenting -- America as "bound to a tragic past," but having already changed profoundly for the better and capable of furher positive change? Why not someone in the mold of Martin Luther King, who even prior to America's profound change for the better understood the country's greatness and capacity for redemption?

Obama does offer a response of sorts. He quotes the passage in his autobiography in which he describes the spectacle of the first service he attended at Wright's church -- the forcefulness of the pastor's voice and the shouting and clapping of his audience. But this is more of a confession than an answer. Obama was caught up in what a more detached observer might consider the hysteria of the moment. It moved him, as perhaps did the political potential of an alliance with a preacher who could drum up such hysteria.

Many of us have been caught up in the powerful emotions this sort of moment can engender. But ordinarily they do not lead to a close 20-year association with someone as fundamentally misguided (as Obama would now have it) as Wright.

This, then, is the evasion of Obama's speech. Why such a close and longstanding association with someone this "profoundly mistaken"? The answer, I have argued, is opportunism in part, but also a left-wing ideology that, whatever Obama may say now, is not so far removed from Wright's deplorable views.