Mike Huckabee’s appearance on Morning Joe has been making its way around the blogosphere. I think it was a very interesting appearance (Transcription via Kos.)

Obama made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

This, I think may reflect much of Huckabee’s experience in the recent campaign as much as anything else. There were certain people ready to hold Huckabee responsible for push polls placed by outside groups, things send by the pastors of churches he visited. The Brownback Campaign got upset because of what an out of town minister who was supporting the campaign said about Catholicism and an apology was demanded from Huckabee himself.

Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.”

Huckabee is not so much defending Reverend Wright as he is pointing out the left is getting done in with similar tactics that they’ve used to define the lives and ministry of men such as Falwell, and suggest that the tactic itself is problematic. Huckabee doesn’t defend Wright’s statements. On follow-up, he made it clear that the statements were “outrageous” and not defensible, but his point is that the tactic is “coming home to roost.”

Huckabee’s statement on race is key:

And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

It’s an honest statement, but it’s not about Reverend Wright (or at least mostly not about Reverend Wright.) Over the past week, most political pundits on the right have rightfully shined a light on the outrageous statements of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. However, Huckabee hits on something most of us have neglected. African American people suffered severe injustices for nearly 300 years. While much has been done in terms of a rising standard of living and improving opportunity, there’s still much work to be done in bringing about true racial healing in America.

There are, of course, many impediments to this and they’re on both sides of the racial divide. Among Black leaders, there are many for whom continued racial divisiveness is big business and for whom true racial reconciliation would be a death knell. There are others who wink at or ignore Black racism, figuring its justified to treat people like dirt because of something that happened to your ancestors.

Among Whites, a happy apathy pervades. Most of us would rather stay away from this whole topic altogether. Honestly discussing race for White Americans is a tight rope that will land them in the racist category.

In his statement, Huckabee acknowledged the pain of African Americans who suffered through segregatio. The danger many conservatives can stumble into is going after the extreme statements with no understanding of what’s behind them. Politically, the short-term cost is small. The people most likely to get offended are least likely to vote Republican anyway. If you want to begin to end the culture of racial resentment than you have to deal with the greater anger that’s out there in American society.

Huckabee has seemed to settle into a part-time temporary role as roving political pundit for the rest of the campaign process. In that role, he’ll annoy conservatives from time to time for a couple reasons.

First, Huckabee isn’t using talking points. The big one right now is that Jeremiah Wright will destroy Obama’s campaign. Not so, says Huckabee. This is March, not October. When we vote in November, this won’t be on people’s minds. And on this, Huckabee is right.

The second is that Huckabee actually cares about the long-term consequences of what he says. At this point, most Americans see him as a once and future candidate. The things he says now could actually hinder him not only in a second campaign, but also in things he wants to accomplish. Showing that he had no clue at all what makes many Blacks angry could make racial reconiliation far more difficult.

Of course, liberals have taken notice. In the midst of crazy conspiracy theories about AIDS on Kos, one commenter remarked, “This is why Huckabee scared me so much as a general election candidate.” Another added, “I don’t think we’ve seen the last him of either.”