Over at the newly renovated Pajamas Media, Hollywood writer-director Lionel Chetwynd weites an open letter to Sen. Barack Obama, describing the speech that Obama should have given:

You say you are devoted to Reverend Wright because he brought you to Christ. I can only imagine how powerful a relationship that forges. But, my imperfect understanding of the Christian Faith tells me you can do him an equally magnificent service: You can help bring him back to Christ. Show him redemption and salvation lie not in the satisfaction of doing little dances in a pulpit while you slander good and decent people. Teach him that great leadership and Christian love abjures the very filth – and I pick that word deliberately – that he spews on an apparently regular basis. After all, Senator, you know our government did not invent the HIV virus to kill African-Americans. You know, Senator, this is not the United States of KKK America. You know the truth of 9/11. At least you should. Both you and Michelle have benefited mightily from the new spirit that has come to America in the last two generations. I thought you were part of that. I thought you were post-racial.

But in your silence, in your justifications, in your facile instruction to contextualize, you seem just a more presentable version of those dreary self-promoters, Sharpton, Jackson, Bakewell and the rest. Surely this is not you. Please, Senator, be brave. Lead. From a position of honesty where context is our daily reality, not drawn from bitter memories, no matter how justified they once might have been. Deny Jeremiah Wright your comfort of “context”. Be Presidential. To all Americans.

That would have been a speech for the ages, and possibly all that a majority of Americans would have needed to be convinced that Obama was made of presidential timber. Instead, as Bill Bradley writes, also at Pajamas HQ, "Obama still has serious questions to answer":

He has to explain to America — and in particular, to key voting groups such as the Scot-Irish who make up much of the working class and patriotically-oriented in the country — the anger that produced such irrational notions as the US government inventing AIDS to destroy the black people, or the idea that the US may have deserved 9/11. And why men such as Wright, whose generation grew up with a frequently rugged racism directed toward them and developed within them, have a chip on their shoulder today.

This task certainly not what Obama wanted to take on when he launched his candidacy on a wave of high-flown, impressively-delivered rhetoric, floating over the historic divisions of America on a cloud of post-racialism.

But it is what he must do now. He didn’t intend to run as “the black candidate” but as a candidate who happened to be black. But being black, or at least, “black enough,” as it turns out, was at least in part a choice for Obama. And as a result of that choice, he rose in Chicago enough to become a United States senator. And as a result of being a senator, he has enough stature to wage this campaign.

As a result, this conversation about race will continue throughout the campaign, together with a conversation about patriotism. “God damn America” is not a concept that goes down well with most voters.

This may be even more of an imperative for Obama than the racial issue, though the two are joined.

What is his idea of America? How is he an American patriot in a time of war?

What can he do to convince the Scots-Irish American voter that he is enough of a patriot to take on the uber-patriot, John McCain, a man who does not have to wave the flag because his very presence waves the flag?

In many respects, Obama represents an emerging America: multi-racial, with an internationalist perspective. But he will not represent any America, at least as president, until he demonstrates that he represents the enduring America.

Read the whole thing--and tune into Bill Bradley (and myself) on Pajamas' PJM Political show each Thursday at 6:00 PM Eastern/3:00 PM Pacific.