Obama rebukes preacher, urges race healing

By Caren Bohan

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday criticized his preacher's racially charged sermons but said he could not disown him in a speech urging Americans to move past their "racial stalemate."

Obama sought to quell a political firestorm ignited when news outlets called attention to sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the Illinois senator attended for two decades.

"We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism," he said. "Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'"

Wright, who retired recently, has railed that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy, called the U.S. government the source of the AIDS virus and expressed anger over what he called racist America.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama, who would be the first African-American president, said in a speech about race in America that borrowed Abraham Lincoln's desire for "a more perfect union."

Flare-ups over race have roiled the campaign trail as Obama battles for the Democratic nomination with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who would be the first woman president. They are vying for the right to face Republican candidate John McCain in the November election.

Obama said Wright's remarks were not simply controversial but instead "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic."

Obama said his own life as the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas had seared into his makeup the idea that racial divisions can be overcome.

"It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years," he said. "But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds."

Clinton had little to say about the speech, telling reporters in Philadelphia she did not see or read Obama's speech but was glad he gave it.

"These are difficult issues and we have seen that in this campaign. Race and gender are difficult issues. And therefore we need to have more discussion about them," she said.

As the Democrats' battled it out, Arizona Sen. McCain was holding his own in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll reflecting hypothetical matchups. Obama led McCain by two percentage points and Clinton led him by one.

McCain, on a Middle East and Europe swing, said in Jordan that a U.S. troop build-up in Iraq is succeeding and that a premature withdrawal would dramatically enhance Iran's influence in the region.

The Obama campaign is worried the uproar over the pastor's comments could cost him support with white voters in states like Pennsylvania, which holds an important voting contest on April 22.

A Quinnipiac University poll gave Clinton a lead over Obama of 53 to 41 percent in Pennsylvania, compared to a 49 percent to 43 percent lead over him in late February in that state.