In the Wall Street Journal today, we read that while Senator Obama’s association with William Ayers is considered a legitimate by Senator McCain, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is “off limits.” The reason, according to a senior McCain adviser, is “it’s not appropriate to attack someone’s faith.”

This decision is both arbitrary and foolish. The controversy surrounding the Reverend Wright doesn’t have anything to do with matters of faith. No one cares what his views are on predestination v. free will or the doctrine of the Trinity. The issue has to do with Wright’s toxic views on race and his hatred for America.

For some of us, Obama’s association with Reverend Wright is at least as important as his association with Ayers. It’s true that Ayers is a more detestable and violent person. At the same time, Senator Obama’s relationship with Wright was much more intimate, longer, and may tell us more about Obama than the relationship with Ayers.

I recall when the Wright story broke. I had written some favorable things about Obama, and I certainly preferred him to Hillary Clinton. The Wright story, and Obama’s shifting explanations about it, caused a kind of cognitive dissonance. How could the Obama who was being portrayed in this campaign — a unifying, post-racial, thoughtful man who was the antithesis of demagoguery and radicalism — spend almost two decades in a church led by a man spewing such hate?

It began to dawn on me, as it did on others, that Obama was something quite different than what he was portraying himself to be. At best, he showed himself to be a fairly ruthless and unprincipled person, willing to use Wright to make his way up the Chicago/Hyde Park political ladder.

Senator Obama has never adequately explained his relationship with Wright; that goes for Ayers and Tony Rezko, too. Why Senator McCain would declare the Reverend Wright to be off limits is puzzling. His argument doesn’t withstand scrutiny. His decision seems to have been impulsive, based not on careful reasoning but on a peculiar sense of honor.

Quite apart from all that, it hurts McCain’s effort to win the election. The Revered Wright is an important data point in understanding the character of Senator Obama. To refuse to raise this matter in a thoughtful, reasonable way makes no sense.

Senator McCain’s task is very difficult; in deciding Obama’s relationship with the Reverend Wright is out of bounds, he’s made it even more so.