Jeremiah Wright may drive us into the arms of Barack Obama.

Jeremiah Wright is "angry at Barack Obama for trying to be disingenuous," said Newt Gingrich. Wright is outraged that Obama tried to suppress and minimize him. Asked if Wright was trying to hurt Obama, Newt said: "I think Reverend Wright has a greater investment in his own self-importance than he does in Senator Obama's victory." Yes, Reverend Wright is on a tear. He's an egomaniac lit afire by this opportunity of a lifetime.

But I see a way for this awful problem to help Obama. It ties back to the original reason he became so popular. Obama seemed to offer a path out of the old-style racial politics that is based on grievances and demands and race as victimhood. Obama did not talk about race. He was black but he didn't talk about race. Now, Wright is rubbing our faces in the racial issues that Obama didn't want to talk about, and maybe he was disingenuous for submerging these things. But if Obama loses, Wright and his ilk will be magnified. They will have been instrumental in destroying Obama, yet they will use fact that Americans rejected Obama to reinforce their critique of America.

The message Obama needs to convey is: Take me now, whatever my flaws, or you will be saddled with people like Wright for decades. If we are disgusted by Wright, we shouldn't reject Obama. We should embrace him as the best hope we're ever going to have.

ADDED: Amba responds:

But the best hope of what?... Obama has been thrown up there like a litmus test to prove how racist the nation still is or isn't. And if you question his judgment or maturity or readiness, that becomes a checkmark on the "racist" side. That's infuriating. In fact, it could be argued that to judge Obama as sternly as you'd judge any human being who wanted to be president is less racist than insisting he be elected to prove we're not racist!

I have often said that we need to test Obama, and that letting him off easy is basically racist. But here my point is that his becoming President would quell the power of the Wrights of this world and we might overcome what will otherwise be a long impasse on race.