Responding today to the media storm over his pastor’s inflammatory words, Barack Obama turned a tempest into an eloquent teaching moment on race in America.

Barack Obama could have responded to the controversy that has been ginned up with regard to comments made by his former pastor with a safe and predictable speech. The politically “smart” strategy — counseled by some Obama allies — would have been to have the Democratic presidential contender focus on concerns about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.’s critique of U.S. foreign policy and then distance himself from any offending sentiments.

But Obama did not do the politically “smart” thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm.

The Illinois senator recognized that the media-driven dialogue about sermons delivered by Wright had little to do with the content of the pastor’s words and everything to do with the color of the pastor’s — and the candidate’s — skin.

So Obama seized the opportunity to open up a dialogue about the role of race in America, turning a political challenge into what the late Paul Wellstone referred to as “a teaching moment.”

At the most basic level, Obama did what the media has failed to do. He presented Wright and Wright’s comments on U.S. domestic and foreign policies in context: the context of the African-American religious experience, the context of the candidate’s connection to the church and, above all, the context of this country’s unresolved experience of what Obama correctly refers to as “the original sin” of the American experiment — human bondage — and its legacy.

The speech was masterful in this regard. Obama took the time to explore questions that rarely if ever get a fair hearing in American politics. He avoided cheap theatrics, such as a blunt rejection of Wright as an individual or a spiritual leader. “Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed,” the senator acknowledged.

“But,” Obama added, “the truth is that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.”

This was not merely gracious, it was instructive. Indeed, it was an essential component of the “teaching moment” — the part that made the rest of what Obama was saying more real and credible.

The other part that made this particular “teaching moment” so successful was the candidate’s recognition that it was not merely his task to open up a deeper discussion. He also had to challenge his listeners.

Obama issued that challenge in what was the essential section of what may well be the essential speech of the 2008 campaign and — if Obama succeeds — of presidential campaigns in the future.

“Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well,” the senator told the crowd in Philadelphia and the millions who tuned in via radio, television and the internet.

After too many campaigns have been diverted into the void of Willie Horton smears and Swift-Boat charges, Barack Obama called American politics to a higher ground:

“For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

“We can do that.

“But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

“That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time.’ This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.

“Not this time.”

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine.