Barack Obama has had a charmed campaign. It’s as if the gods are aligned in his favor. Every negative is turned into a positive and it looks as if he is the right candidate at the Wright time.

Essentially, the media has given Obama a free ride. Even when there were hints of skeletons in Obama’s closet, no one seriously pursued them; journalists don’t like to do the hard work these days. Besides, it’s much more fun for the media to build a candidate up rather than to tear one down. And doesn’t everyone prefer to  cover a matinee idol rather than a typical politician? Obama’s charm is viral.

Still, nothing is ever perfect. Obama hit a bump in the road when his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a former Obama donor and friend who is currently on trial for corruption surfaced thanks to Hillary Clinton who raised Rezko’s name during a debate in the same sentence as the word slumlord.

The next day the Rezko story hit the papers. In 2005, Mr. Obama struck a property deal with Mr. Rezko's wife, Rita, despite the fact that her husband was already under criminal investigation. Mrs. Rezko bought an empty plot next to the Obamas' $1.65 million home in the toney section of Hyde Park, and later sold the Obamas’ some of the land so that they could enlarge their plot.

When confronted on the deal the Illinois senator admitted he was "bone-headed".

That was pretty much the end of the story. Apparently, Obama’s answer was the Wright answer for the press.

Another story circulating under the political radar for months was that of the twenty year relationship between Obama and his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr. The Reverend, Senator Obama’s longtime spiritual mentor, was someone everyone in the press knew had made incendiary remarks about white people, the American government, Jews, well; Wright is an equal-opportunity hater.  

No one knew better than Obama the trouble that the controversial Rev. Wright could cause for his candidacy. In fact, Obama moved to distance himself from his spiritual mentor back in Feb. 2007 when Wright was to deliver the invocation at Obama’s presidential announcement.  He never did. Obama called Wright the night before the announcement and rescinded the invitation.

Nevertheless, when tapes surfaced of the hate-spewing, vitriolic pastor, Obama denied having ever heard Wright utter any of these words, recanted that original statement in his now much heralded speech on race, and recently revived his first denial, what I call Obama’s I don’t know nothin’ about it defense.

Again, even though there was proof to the contrary, the press felt that Obama had given the Wright answer - all of them - and they put the Wright issue to bed.

Here’s another one that Obama got away with. When this website broke the story that Obama’s campaign was nothing more than a redux of the campaign of now Governor Duval Patrick, also headed by David Axelrod, many were surprised.

When words that Duval had used in his campaign started spewing from the mouth of Obama - the man characterized as one of the brilliant writers and orators of our day - plagiarized words, Obama answered with a lame explanation that the two are old friends and Patrick had given Obama permission to use the speeches. Of course, Obama never gave credit to Patrick at the time he used his speeches, and left all who listened to believe that what he was speaking were his own words.

As the other  stories did, the plagiarizing story quickly drifted into the ozone, no real damage done. Again, Obama had apparently given the press the Wright answer, and all was forgiven.

There are other stories percolating just below the political radar that could hurt Obama. Recently, Fox News ran a video they’d uncovered of Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman, now college professor and good friend and donor to Obama’s political career, another hate-monger who refuses to apologize for trying to blow up American’s.

And there’s Obama’s controversial relationship with pro-Palestianian Rashid Khalidi, which we’ve mentioned here, and now is the subject of an LA Times piece.

If the past is prelude, Senator Obama has nothing to worry about. As the others did, these stories will probably drift away as Obama seduces the press with his winning smile, winks his handsome eyes at the female press, and gives a little nudge to the boy’s on the bus with the  subtext that says: we guys are in this all together. To the public he’ll offer some clever explanation, or maybe not so clever – it doesn’t much matter what he says.

The stories will go away because whenever Obama is asked, he always gives the Wright answer.

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