With his "speaking tour" over the last three days, Jeremiah Wright has managed to do the impossible this political season: unite pundits from the left and the right in agreement about how badly he's hurting Barack Obama's quest for the White House.

For a brief tour of the landscape, start with Bob Herbert, who asks the question that is on everyone's mind: why is Wright doing this?

All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come up with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.

This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why - if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks - does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

In the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg says with his performance yesterday Wright exploded the "I was taken out of context" excuse:

Wright is every bit as radical as his detractors claimed and explodes Obama's messianic rhetoric about standing foursquare against divisiveness. Which is why that chorus you hear rising up from the John McCain and Clinton campaigns sounds an awful lot like this: "God damn Jeremiah Wright? No, no, no: God bless Jeremiah Wright!"

Eugene Robinson says he's "had it" with Rev. Wright and his "egocentric" response, and deconstructs the false claim, made four times yesterday by Wright at the National Press Club, that this was not an attack on him but an assault on the black church. Robinson writes:

Historically and theologically, he [Wright] was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus.

Sadly, it's time for Obama to return the favor.

Rich Lowry called Wright's performance yesterday "majestically awful," and said he took Obama's "critically acclaimed race speech in Philadelphia, ripped it into bits and tossed it in the air to serve as confetti for his parade through the media."

George Will chastises McCain for his flip-flopping on whether Wright should be an issue in the campaign :

When North Carolina Republicans recently ran an ad featuring Wright in full cry, McCain mounted his high horse, from which he rarely dismounts, and demanded that the ad be withdrawn. The North Carolinians properly refused. Wright is relevant.

He is a demagogue with whom Obama has had a voluntary 20-year relationship that implies, if not moral approval, certainly no serious disapproval. Wright also is an ongoing fountain of anti-American and, properly understood, anti-black rubbish. His Monday speech demonstrated that he wants to be a central figure in this presidential campaign. He should be.

Even Mary Mitchell, a fervent supporter of Obama and defender of Wright, sees what a disaster this has been:

And fair or unfair, if Obama loses the Democratic primary, all fingers will point to Wright.

I can't blame Wright for fighting for his good name.

But while he may feel vindicated, his new words will do nothing to repair the damage his old words caused the Obama campaign.

In this circumstance, Wright needed to be a pastor more than he needed to be a man.

Wright even has his hometown papers on the same page. The Chicago Tribune editorializes today:

By the end of Wright's performance, you had to wonder if he was trying to torpedo Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He surely didn't seem troubled by that possibility. "Nothing can get in the way if God wants Obama to be president," Wright said. Maybe not. But the pastor seemed interested in testing the theory.

And the Trib's more liberal counterpart, the Chicago Sun-Times opines:

When asked why he had waited until now to defend himself, Wright recalled his mother's advice: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

We saw Wright on Bill Moyers' show on public television this weekend. The man is no fool.

But maybe he should have followed his mother's advice.