Obama, from Rev. Wright to Trayvon Martin President Obama's comments on Friday about the killing of Trayvon Martin were remarkable in many respects, but not least because of the distance he has traveled since the equally notable speech he delivered in 2008 during the controversy about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. When Obama - then an aspirant to the presidency - spoke in 2008, he sought to translate and explain the grievances, fears and resentments of both whites and blacks concerning the volatile topic of race in America. He spoke as a bridge builder who was trying to give something close to equal weight to the views of each side. One week after a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in the death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin, people began to gather for rallies scheduled nationwide. Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, spoke to a New York crowd. On Friday, he again sought to calm a roiling controversy, but he spoke as an African American who happened to be president, and he spoke to explain why the not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman has been so difficult for so many African Americans to accept. Both speeches - one a formal address to an audience at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the other informal remarks delivered in the White House briefing room - displayed Obama's eloquence and intellectual facility. But the motivations behind them were dramatically different. In 2008, Obama's candidacy was rocked by revelations about shocking and racially divisive comments his then-pastor had made from the pulpit of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. For Obama, this was a personal political crisis. He had joined that congregation as a young community organizer. Wright had presided over his marriage to Michelle Robinson and baptized their children. The title of Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," was taken from one of Wright's sermons. Throughout his campaign, Obama had tried to transcend the issue of race. He was, as the saying went, a post-racial candidate, not an extension of the civil rights generation of black leaders who had preceded him. In an interview later in the campaign, Obama told me this: "What you had was a moment where all the suspicions and misunderstandings that are embedded in our racial history were suddenly laid bare." He knew he could neither look away from the controversy nor escape it. He had to confront it or risk seeing his candidacy destroyed. "If we had not handled the Reverend Wright episode properly," he said in that interview, "I think we could have lost." Jon Favreau, his speechwriter, was tasked with composing a draft but did so only after a lengthy conversation with the candidate. He knew the speech had to be that personal. Obama then took the draft and rewrote it. "This is really complicated," he told friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in a telephone call late one night as he worked on it. He finished the speech around 2 a.m. on the day he was to deliver it. "I think it's good," he told friends that morning. He talked that day in April 2008 about "the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect." He explained the roots of the anger in the black community and the resentment in the white community and the need for each side to understand the other.