This may be a very good speech. Time will tell. One thing we do know is that Senator Obama has botched this story from beginning to end, and it will now have been dragged out for a week, if not longer. Whatever the fallout of the speech, I can now see the wisdom of Senator Clinton’s reiteration that a speech is not an achievement. One can’t wallow in the pews and friendship of hatred and racism and erase that with a single speech, anymore than one can erase that past with wendingly painful distinctions that would otherwise make the appropriate condemnation of Reverend Wright easy. As easy, say, as the condemnation of Louis Farrakhan was. On a separate note, I wonder if anyone caught the unarticulated distinction between the divisiveness of Trinity United Church of Christ and the NYT portrayal of a black synagogue in the same city this past Saturday. That congregation, the former “Ethiopian Hebrew Settlement Workers Association,” features blacks, whites, Hispanics, and others of differing backgrounds. Maybe Sen. Obama should spend a little time there to see how Unity in Chicago can really be achieved. Maybe.