LAUER: Now to Senator [Hillary] Clinton's rival, Senator Barack Obama, and his high-stakes speech about race a little earlier this week. Many people seemed to like it, but plenty of his opponents see the senator's response as a political opportunity. NBC's Lee Cowan has more.
COWAN: At the K&W Cafeteria in Fayetteville, North Carolina, lunch is served to a diverse crowd. For many here, Barack Obama's call for racial reconciliation was long overdue.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: For some things, you need to talk about and get it out in the open, so healing can start.
COWAN: But there were just as many who thought the speech some called “historic” may have done the senator more harm than good.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think, for the most part, it rubbed people the wrong way. I really do.
COWAN: The senator's political rivals see an opening in that kind of response. After months of images of the freshman senator who could do no wrong, the controversy over his relationship with his longtime pastor, Revered Jeremiah Wright, became a clear angle of attack.
WRIGHT: Not “God Bless America,” God damn America!
COWAN: And Obama knew it from the start.
OBAMA: There's no doubt that, you know, that this will be used as political fodder.
COWAN: And he knew a single speech, no matter how historic, would likely not be enough to erase it.
RICHARD WOLFFE (Newsweek magazine): In some ways, he was always going to fall short because you can't stop that kind of thing, either being aired again or the memory of it.
COWAN: That was clearly evident. The airwaves are still full of sound and fury over Reverend Wright and Obama's reluctance not to come to terms with him sooner, despite his reasoning.
OBAMA: I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.
JOE MADISON (radio host): I will say to white America -- especially you white men -- there's nothing to be afraid of.
PAT BUCHANAN (MSNBC political analyst): Well, they're not afraid, Joe, but I'll tell you this --
MADISON: Well, then why the reaction?
BUCHANAN: -- well, we don't like to hear our country spat upon and ranted against.
COWAN: Already there's a YouTube mini-movie out entitled, “Is Obama Wright?” that hits not just on Obama's pastor and his faith --
OBAMA: I wasn't in church.
WRIGHT: They live below the level of Clarence, Colin, and Condamnesia.
OBAMA: I wasn't in church.
COWAN: -- but on the senator's patriotism, too.
SINGER: And the home of the brave!
SCARBOROUGH: If Republicans had to select their opponent right now, it would be Barack Obama because they knew that this fall, they would have Barack Obama and they would tie Reverend Wright together with him as his running mate.
COWAN: Through it all, though, the senator can take comfort in at least one thing, and that's that the number of YouTube hits that his Philadelphia speech on race is getting, has now outnumbered the number of hits that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's controversial comments have been getting -- at least for now. For Today, Lee Cowan, NBC News, Charlotte.