Can we please get past the hyperbole around religious leaders loosely connected to candidates?

For a week or so, the huge story coursing through the veins of the mainstream media was Barack Obama’s connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had said some pretty controversial stuff, like “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.” You can read more bombastic Wright excerpts in this article from ABC. Naturally there was all sorts of speculation about what this might do to Obama’s campaign. Now, the furor is generally agreed to be over thanks in no small part to the news cycle’s more recent obsession with Hillary Clinton’s disingenuous Balkans sniper fire remarks.

In a Tuesday article, the New York Times asks an astute question: why hasn’t John McCain’s connection to another religious leader who’s said a lot of controversial things drawn the same scrutiny or media frenzy? The article looks at the Rev. John C. Hagee, an evangelist who has drawn criticism for views thought to be hostile to Catholics and Jews, and endorsed McCain earlier this year.

Instead of getting big play on the network news, the NYT writes, McCain has been allowed to largely escape with the following explanation:
“In no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee’s views, which I obviously do not.” Hagee and McCain have both downplayed anything that could be damaging to the campaign, and focus has been on other issues.

It would be easy to criticize the hypocrisy of the 24 hour news media for jumping on Obama’s pastor but not McCain’s, or the right wing alarmists who criticized Wright but not Hagee, but this is beside the point.

Candidates should not be held responsible for the fringe views of any of their supporters, as long as they do not share those views themselves. Both candidates repudiated the most inflammatory statements, and it would be nice to stick with evaluating how all candidates might perform as president, rather than what a friend or supporter of theirs once said.