Just as the dust began to settle on the Wright controversy, another pastor issue has surfaced for Barack Obama. It appears that Obama has had some associations with Rev. James Meeks, another particularly vocal member of the black clergy, whose focus is homophobia.

So now Barack Obama is not only a closet racist, but a closet homophobe as well? Horrors! As many will claim, the only conclusion to reach is that he’s a demagogue, or is that strong enough? Maybe we all need to recognize that his elegantly nuanced rhetoric calling for change is nothing but a complete scam, carefully designed to usher in a new era, not of hope and positive progress, but of massive divisiveness in which the ravings of the African-American clergy become the law of the land! Though it was Mike Huckabee that called for a revised constitution to better reflect God’s standards, this is Obama’s secret agenda! But rather than a perfectly reasonable interpretation of 'God’s standards' as espoused by Huckabee and the white evangelicals, Obama will finally bring about the absolute destruction of the white oppressors, and get rid of all the gays in the bargain. What other evil lurks within him? Wait! I know!! He’s the Anti-Christ himself!!! That’s it!!!! WE’RE DOOMED!!!!!

Welcome to the Republican fleet of Swiftboats awaiting the electorate this fall. It might even work. Anything to move the focus away from genuine issues.

If nothing else, the exposure of Reverend Wright, and now Meeks, has brought considerable public attention to deep seated issues within the black community. Homophobia and hypermasculinity are just another aspect of the poisonous thinking that has contributed to the awful problems faced by this segment of the population. As noted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “it probably doesn't help young people in the black community when they're told that their country hates them, that the U.S. government gave them drugs and AIDS, and that jail and genocide are the officially-sanctioned plan for them.”

The writer, Ralph Reiland, makes some excellent points in this article, correctly identifying that it is the prevalence of this line of thought that is the ultimate source of the crime, violence and hopelessness that permeates the African-American community. Where I vehemently disagree with him is in his implicit assumption that by associating with such lunacy, Obama is exhibiting complicity. I don’t agree with this argument as it applies to Wright, and I don’t agree with it here either. Was Obama aware of homophobia in black churches? Duh. Salon explored the campaign’s South Carolina tour with anti-gay ‘reformed homosexual’ Donnie McClurkin, which also included the openly gay Rev. Andy Sidden. It was interesting, to say the least.

Note that the backlash at Sidden's inclusion has not come from black church organizations so much as gay groups criticizing Obama for retaining McClurkin. McClurkin, for his part, hasn't even pulled out in response, though Obama has virtually done somersaults to justify McClurkin's inclusion. On Thursday, as the tour began, Obama supporters from the African-American religious community and LGBT campaign leaders collaborated on a letter to the public that attempted to clarify their candidate's decision to keep McClurkin onboard, stating, "We believe that the only way for these two sides to find common ground is to do so together."

Does Omaba need to address these things in depth? Of course. And he will be forced to. The GOP will bring this front and center, and hope like hell it deflects attention from Obama’s main message. Omama’s response to such emotionally volatile issues will determine which direction the independents move, and it is the independents that will determine the outcome of this election.

And what is Obama’s main message, besides “unity and hope”? It is that Washington is nothing but an enclave of special interests, the occupants of both congress and the executive branch forever beholden to special interests; the inhabitants of political office concerned not with the voices of the public, but with the whispers and wealth of the lobbyists.

Maybe the most glaring of all of the candidate’s associations surfaced just this past week, though the public outrage has been relatively quiet to this point. It turns out that Phil Gramm, the general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, led the charge in 1999 to repeal the regulations that have led to the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more than $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.

Now, some housing experts and economists see Gramm’s thinking in the recent housing proposal from McCain, the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee. Gramm is often a surrogate for the Arizona senator, particularly in meetings focused on the economy. And McCain has hinted he’d consider the former Texas senator for Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.

It's occurred to me many times that Presidential elections in the US normally involve a mostly clueless electorate choosing between two clueless candidates. Obama addressed the economy in a well received speech at Cooper Union last week. Though I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, it is obvious that he and his advisors have a deep grasp of the source of today’s economic woes. Obama’s speech on race the previous week demonstrated a measured, personal, balanced understanding of that issue as well. What I have read of his foreign policy ideas again strikes me as well thought out. Whatever Obama may be, clueless would be a misnomer.

There is a deep cynicism that many of our citizens feel about our political system, a cynicism that I have shared for too long. This voter, for one, is much more concerned that McCain’s top economic advisory circle includes a classically corrupt career politician advocating ‘more of the same’ while he lines his own pockets, than I am that Obama has associated with members of the black clergy that give voice to stupid and offensive views that are shared by too damn many of the black community as a whole. (If this were not the case, there wouldn’t be an audience for these rants.)

I’m tired of cynicism. Is Obama perfect? No. And there will be plenty of time to explore the imperfections of the three remaining candidates between now and election day. As far as I’m concerned, the Wright/Meeks controversy boils down to castigating Obama for associating with black clergy, which is inescapable for a biracial politician. Would it be better received if his ‘spiritual advisors’ were Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? Somehow, I think not.

This is all an excellent snapshot of what awaits us in the fall. America’s immediate future will come down to whether the electorate reacts to the collective fears which will be emphasized by the Grand Old Party, or responds to a calm, reasoned call for change from a biracial candidate who is attempting the impossible.