Here's the big question, and it's one that Barack Obama simply can't answer effectively: what did Reverend Wright say yesterday that was any different from what he's said before? For Obama to be so "outraged and saddened" now, and to suggest that the man he saw yesterday was somehow different from the man we saw in the clips on YouTube simply strains credulity.

It doesn't help matters that Obama seemed significantly less outraged last night by Rev. Wright's tour de force at the National Press Club than he was today, which would lead any thinking person to conclude that today was less an expression of sincerity than one of political expediency.

(UPDATE: Readers suggest I'm being unfair to Obama with this last comment, since Obama said he didn't see clips of Wright's performance until after he held his hastily arranged press conference in North Carolina last night. The flip side to that argument, however, is that 1) Obama's folks should have made time for him to view Wright's performance sometime yesterday, given how important it was, and/or 2) Obama should never have held a press conference unless and until he'd seen exactly what transpired with Wright earlier in the day.

The fact he called a press conference last night specifically to reissue a standard "he doesn't speak for me" kind of comment and then called another one today to communicate that he was "outraged and saddened" was either a strategic blunder or, again, Obama trying to take another at bat after realizing he'd whiffed the first time around.)