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The candidate stepped in front of a supportive crowd to deliver a speech on race. Earlier, his campaign had been confronted by racially tinged and inflammatory remarks made by someone not formally affiliated with the campaign in the heat of a national discussion on race relations. But he didn’t take the easy way out. He did not excuse the comments or embrace them. He did not explain them away as the legitimate product of a life spent struggling against racial bias and bigotry. Rather, he challenged the comments and the speaker. He risked his political standing and told his friendly audience that the comments were inappropriate and had no place in modern American political discourse. He took a stand on the side of what is right and decent when he could have scored political points by demonstrating that he “understood.” He had the courage to do the right thing and not the politically expedient one.

The year, of course, was 1992, and the candidate was Bill Clinton. It was not Sen. Barack Obama in Philadelphia this week. Obama’s speech, although rhetorically brilliant, was not as transformative a speech on race relations as Bill Clinton’s speech delivered to the Rainbow Coalition Convention in the midst of his first campaign for president. That speech contained the now famous “Sister Souljah moment,” when then Gov. Bill Clinton told the assembled attendees that comments made in the wake of the Los Angeles riots by the rap star of that name were inappropriate.

Sister Souljah was quoted by the Washington Post in the week after the riots ended excusing the rioters in stark language. “I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I’m saying?” she said. Clinton could have ignored the remarks. Souljah was not speaking for him and had no ties to his campaign. Instead, in his speech to the Rainbow Coalition the following month, Clinton called out Souljah in front of an audience that was sympathetic to her sentiments. “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think [white supremacist] David Duke was giving that speech,” he said. Clinton was denounced as a racist by Souljah and was criticized by Rainbow Coalition founder Rev. Jesse Jackson and other African-American Democratic leaders for his candor. But his remarks stand in sharp contrast to the approach Barack Obama took this week.

Sen. Obama’s speech also came in the midst of a media firestorm over racially charged comments. Sermons by the pastor of Obama’s Chicago church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had come to light. The comments included wild charges of a government conspiracy to kill blacks with the AIDS virus, government complicity in the September 11th terrorist attacks, an explanation for the attacks as “America’s chickens coming home to roost,” and the condemnation of America for “treating [blacks] as less than human.” “God d— America!” he shouted. Obama was facing questions about his 20-year association with Rev. Wright and his membership in Trinity United Church. Obama tried to distance himself from the comments, saying at first that he had not been in attendance for them or had heard any controversial remarks from Wright. But media questions persisted and so the campaign scheduled a major speech on race.

The speech was well received by the media and has been hailed as a landmark address on race relations. But Sen. Obama was not willing, or able, to go as far as Bill Clinton did in his speech to the Rainbow Coalition. Obama condemned Wright’s comments, saying in part, “[T]he remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial…they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country. As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive.” Had he stopped there, the speech may have risen to Clintonian heights. But Sen. Obama went further, excusing Wright, refusing to renounce him, and explaining away the controversial comments as endemic to Trinity United Church and part of “the black experience in America.” Rather than tell Rev. Wright that he must accept that his views on race and America are wrong, as Clinton told Sister Souljah; Obama told America that it must accept the views of Rev. Wright as having a basis in a legitimate thought.

Sen. Obama found himself in a difficult position when he delivered his speech. If he denounced Rev. Wright and resigned from Trinity United, he risked being viewed as a political opportunist, and risked his standing among African-American voters in the remaining Democratic primaries. If he embraced Wright, he risked appearing as a radical, out of touch with the independents and moderates that have given his campaign broad support. So he equivocated, at once condemning and excusing the comments in a cynical attempt to play to the sympathies of both parts of his voting base. Sen. Obama may think that he has ended the controversy with his well-delivered and well received speech. But the Clintons know a political opportunity when they see one. And although Sen. Clinton’s campaign has said that the issue should be put to rest in the wake of the speech, the questions will persist. Bill Clinton was not afraid to take the chance of temporarily alienating a portion of his supporters in order to make a larger political point in 1992. Obama missed his chance to be Clinton on Tuesday.

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Mark Impomeni is a contributing editor at RedState and covers the White House for AOL’s new political blog, The Political Machine. He writes a column with a conservative’s take on the state of the 2008 presidential race for Political-Buzz.com.

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