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You need to look at it from the perspective of an ambitious, opportunistic politician. Politics is a very dirty business. Politicians use people at certain stages of their careers and then they turn their backs on them.
If you were a young black college graduate looking to the lay the groundwork to launch a fast-track political career, it makes sense to start in a neighborhood where you can rise the fastest and to associate yourself with the most popular black church. In the black community, the church is where the constituency that is going to elect you comes from. You pick the biggest, most powerful church and you align yourself with it, and if you don't you're making a mistake.
You think somebody as smart as Obama did not weigh the positives of jump starting his early political career v.s. the eventuality of Wright proving to be a liability? He did. Obama knew the Wright train would crash, but he figured he could ditch him and talk his way out of it and he was right. Noboby cares about Rev. Wright. The political reality was that Rev. Wright filled a need, but he was always expendable.
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