The Role of Friendship in Politics

Senator Obama denounced comments made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A person should always be willing to give a close friend the benefit of the doubt but at some point you have to speak out on your own views. Senator Obama faced a difficult situation yesterday when he gave these remarks to the press.

"I want to be very clear that, moving forward, Rev. Wright does not speak for me, he does not speak for our campaign,"

"I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks, but what I do want him to be very clear about...is that when I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am."

When you trust a friend and have a long term relationship with that person it is very hard to reject them in such a public way. Friendship is one of those types of blind faith where you trust that the other person will care about your welfare and your feelings.

I will admit it is not that you have to always agree on every subject but major issues should be close. Friends of Public figures like Senator Obama have the added burden of being looked at closely by the public. The man is judged by the company he keeps; nevertheless, one has to wonder would you want to be judged by the opinions of each and every one of your friends. There are times in my life when I have enjoyed having friends whose views on politics I strongly disagree with because they force me to see different view points on issues. I can’t say that the behavior has been bad for me.

Why should our presidential candidate have to strongly agree with the views of all of his friends? We have seen over the last eight years what having someone who refused to see the other side of an issue has cost this country. Is that the behavior we want to encourage in our own candidate? What is freedom of speech if not the right to publicly disagree with the views of your friends and others in our society? We don’t have to agree with Rev. Wright's comments but we should also not turn a deaf ear to them either because they reflect the views of more than one man in this country.