The Bush-Obama Language Barrier

The man who coined "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" to justify Bush's push into Iraq thinks Barack Obama has not gone far enough to distance himself from the hyperbolic language of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In today's Washington Post, former White House speech writer Michael Gerson says Obama's oration yesterday "fell short in significant ways" of separating himself from "a dangerous man" who has told lies about the US government.

Wright's claim that the AIDS virus was invented as a means of genocide against people of color, says Gerson, creates "an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories," in contrast, of course, to President Bush's scientifically grounded opposition to stem cell research.

In the 2004 campaign, Gerson had Bush railing against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in belaboring schools with No Child Left Behind yardsticks as cover for attacking teachers unions that were supporting Democrats

Now, he asks, how can Obama associate himself with a "political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans?"

If Gerson doesn't know the answer to that question, the voters may explain it to him and his former employer in November.