Is This The End Of The Road For Obama?

By Simon Heffer – Telegraph UK – March 08, 2010

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama’s regime, characterized now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

The once mighty Detroit seems to be on the verge of being abandoned.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a leveling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr. Obama’s own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional.

Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed a jobs Bill, costing $15 billion, which would give tax breaks to firms hiring new staff and, through state sponsorship of construction projects, create thousands of jobs too. The Senate is trying to approve a Bill that would provide a further $150 billion of tax incentives to employers. Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labor secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities’ access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by “Leftists” and being turned into a socialist state.

“Obama’s big problem,” a senior Democrat said, “is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN.” The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by “progressives” who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr. Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganizing Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr. Obama’s own party are.

Mr. Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s Chief of Staff; oleaginous profiles of this Chicago political hack, a veteran of that unlovely team that polluted the Clinton White House, appeared in otherwise respectable journals, praising the combination of his religious devotion, his family-man image, his ruthless operating technique and his command of the vocabulary of profanity. Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care.

This went down badly with friends of Mr Emanuel, notably with Mr. Emanuel himself. His partisans, apparently taking dictation from him, have filled newspaper columns and blogs with uplifting accounts of the Wonder of Rahm: as one of them put it, “Emanuel is the only person preventing Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter”. They attack other Obama “sycophants”, such as David Axelrod, his campaign guru, and Valerie Jarret, a long-time friend of Mrs. Obama and a fixer from the office of Mayor Daley of Chicago who now manages – or tries to manage – the President’s image. These “sycophants” have, they argue, tried to keep the President above politics, letting Congress run away with the agenda, and gainsaying Mr. Emanuel’s advice to Mr. Obama to get tough with his internal opponents. This naive act of manipulation has brought its own counter-counterattack, with an anti-Emanuel pundit drawing a comparison with the UK’s own Prime Minister and ridiculing the idea that Mr. Obama should start bullying people too.

The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr. Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can’t. That was more Mr. Axelrod’s fault than Mr. Emanuel’s. And, to be fair to Mr. Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America’s politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being “scrubbed” (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.

A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr. Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr. Clinton was an operator in a way Mr. Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country’s multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realize.

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr. Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point in a nation’s having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.

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Nothing Could Be Worse – or could it?

I am more than pissed-off.  I’m livid.

For those of you who “know me”, I’m a pretty even keeled type of guy.  I used to have pretty bad temper, but have out grown that – thankfully.

But what I read a few days ago has sent me over the edge.

My father was a career military officer who served this country for 32 years. He’s now passed and I’m grateful for that – in that this administration’s activities, which are totally anti-American, would cause him pain beyond belief.

Several of my relatives, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, friends, classmates and myself  also served this country honorably. Some left their blood on the battlefields.   And those that were fortunate to come home,  they, too, would be outraged by the treasonous actions that our ‘great leader’ has perpetrated.

Obama also gave away the procedures used at Gitmo giving our enemies a blueprint of what to expect and how to over come the various methods of procuring information.  It’s always nice to give terrorists our secrets so they can be victorious the next time they invade our country and kill thousands, if not millions, of our citizens.  Obama is a fool.  Perhaps he’d like to explain his actions to those who were affected by 9/11.

The article which I speak of was published in the Wall Street Journal on April 23, 2009.

You can link to it here or read the full story below.

***

Presidential Poison

His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama’s Presidency

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama’s victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

“Your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, in his August 1, 2002 memo. “In light of the information you believe [detainee Abu] Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an ‘increased pressure phase.'”

So the CIA requests a legal review at a moment of heightened danger, the Justice Department obliges with an exceedingly detailed analysis of the law and interrogation practices — and, seven years later, Mr. Obama says only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. The political convenience of this distinction for Mr. Obama betrays its basic injustice. And by the way, everyone agrees that senior officials, including President Bush, approved these interrogations. Is this President going to put his predecessor in the dock too?

Mr. Obama seemed to understand the peril of such an exercise when he said, before his inauguration, that he wanted to “look forward” and beyond the antiterror debates of the Bush years. As recently as Sunday, Rahm Emanuel said no prosecutions were contemplated and now is not a time for “anger and retribution.” Two days later the President disavowed his own chief of staff. Yet nothing had changed except that Mr. Obama’s decision last week to release the interrogation memos unleashed a revenge lust on the political left that he refuses to resist.

Just as with the AIG bonuses, he is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it — only to encourage it more. Within hours of Mr. Obama’s Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The demands for a “special counsel” at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe’s left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.

Those officials won’t be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn’t doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he’ll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway’s political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.

Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.

Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party’s desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

***

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Biden Bucks His Equity Talk

Two weeks ago, I explored the gap between Barack Obama’s rhetoric on pay equity and the reality of how he pays women in his Senate office. While Obama preaches equal pay for equal work, he does not practice it on Capitol Hill.

Well, it turns out that his running mate, Joe Biden, is even worse.

Based on calculations using Senate pay records posted by LegiStorm.com, a political transparency organization, between October 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008, Obama’s 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama’s average male employee earned $54,397 on an annualized basis.

Obama’s 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.

Among Obama’s top five highest-paid — and likely most senior — employees, one was female. Among his top 20, seven were women.

All told, for every dollar that Obama paid his average male staffer, his female counterpart made just 83 cents.

As for Biden, his 14 male staffers split a total payroll outlay of $1,077,128.40. So, Biden’s average male employee earned $76,937.74 per annum.

Biden’s 27 female employees divided $1,517,874.47, or $56,217.57, on average.

Among Biden’s top five highest-paid aides, one was a woman. Among the top 20, 11 were women.

All told, for every dollar that Biden paid his average male staffer, his female equivalent made only 73 cents.

This number is significant. Not only does Biden discount women by more than a quarter per dollar paid to men, on average. Biden collides into the standard by which his own campaign berates major companies for alleged pay discrimination.

Beneath the website banner “Fighting for Pay Equity,” Obama-Biden’s women’s issues page complains that, “Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. A recent study estimates it will take another 47 years for women to close the wage gap with men at Fortune 500 corporate offices.”

Biden actually pays his average female employees four cents less than the level that triggers outrage on his own campaign’s website!

Nevertheless, Obama and Biden have the gall to go after McCain on this topic. The Democrats Monday launched an ad in Ohio in which Lilly Ledbetter, a Supreme Court litigant on pay equity, attacks McCain because he “opposed a law to give women equal pay for equal work. And he dismissed the wage gap, saying women just need education and training.”

McCain told the Associated Press last April 23: “I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems…This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private-enterprise system.”

Far more important is that McCain actually follows Obama and Biden’s gospel on this issue, almost to a fault.

McCain’s 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.

On average, these figures show, women in John McCain’s Senate office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes — a full 31 cents higher than Biden pays. (For detailed figures see this chart. I outline my methodology in my previous piece.)

In short, when it comes to implementing pay equity on Capitol Hill, the Democratic nominees talk a great game. However, in a three-way match-up, McCain earns the gold medal while Obama and Biden score silver and bronze, respectively.

To hear Obama and Biden taunt McCain on this issue is like being at the Beijing Olympics and hearing 200-meter butterfly medalists Cseh Laszlo of Hungary (silver) and Matsuda Takeshi of Japan (bronze) tell America’s gold-plated Michael Phelps to go take swimming lessons.

By Deroy Murdock

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From the Fact Check Desk: Obama’s New Spanish Language TV Ad Es Erróneo

(PP) – Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh.

As first reported by the Washington Post, Obama’s ad features a narrator saying: “They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with…the intolerance…they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much.”

The screen then shows these two quotes from Limbaugh:

“…stupid and unskilled Mexicans”
—Rush Limbaugh

“You shut your mouth or you get out!”
—Rush Limbaugh

The narrator then says, “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote…and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain…more of the same old Republican tricks.”

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh.

As first reported by the Washington Post, Obama’s ad features a narrator saying: “They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with…the intolerance…they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much.”

The screen then shows these two quotes from Limbaugh:

“…stupid and unskilled Mexicans”
—Rush Limbaugh

“You shut your mouth or you get out!”
—Rush Limbaugh

The narrator then says, “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote…and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain…more of the same old Republican tricks.”

There are some real factual problems with this ad, which is titled “Dos Caras,” or two faces.

First of all, tying Sen. McCain – especially on the issue of immigration reform – to Limbaugh is unfair.

Limbaugh opposed McCain on that issue. Vociferously. And in a larger sense, it’s unfair to link McCain to Limbaugh on a host of issues since Limbaugh, as any even occasional listener of his knows, doesn’t particularly care for McCain.

Second, the quotes of Limbaugh’s are out of context.

Railing against NAFTA in 1993, Limbaugh said, “If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine ’cause those are the kinds of jobs NAFTA is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”

Not one of his most eloquent moments, to be sure, but his larger point was that NAFTA would mean that unskilled stupid Mexicans would be doing the jobs of unskilled stupid Americans.

I’m not going to defend how he said it, but to act as if this was just a moment of Limbaugh slurring Mexicans is not accurate. Though again, certainly if people were offended I could understand why.

The second quote is totally unfair. In 2006, Limbaugh was mocking Mexican law, and he wrote:

“Everybody’s making immigration proposals these days. Let me add mine to the mix. Call it The Limbaugh Laws:

“First: If you immigrate to our country, you have to speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor; no unskilled workers allowed. Also, there will be no special bilingual programs in the schools with the Limbaugh Laws. No special ballots for elections. No government business will be conducted in your language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote or hold political office.

“If you’re in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here: an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If not, stay home. But if you want to buy land, it’ll be restricted. No waterfront, for instance. As a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to the property.

“And another thing: You don’t have the right to protest. You’re allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our President or his policies. You’re a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you’re going to jail.

“You think the Limbaugh Laws are harsh? Well, every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico today! That’ how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country. Yet Mexicans come here illegally and protest in our streets!

“How do you say ‘double standard’ in Spanish? How about: ‘No mas!’”

But even if one is uninclined to see Limbaugh’s quotes as having been taken unfairly out of context, linking them to McCain makes as much sense as running a quote from Bill Maher and linking it to Obama.

Asked for backup as to how Obama could link McCain to Limbaugh, the campaign provided this interview with McCain refusing to condemn the Minutemen from from the Kansas City Star:

Q:  ‘Are they a good thing?  The Civil Defense Corps, do you think — do they help in the immigration fight, or not?’

A:  ‘I think they’re citizens who are entitled to being engaged in the process.  They’re obviously very concerned about immigration.’

Q:  ‘Are they helpful?’

A:  ‘I think that’s up to others to judge.  I don’t agree with them, but they certainly are exercising their legal rights as citizens.’

Asked about the “lies” they’re accusing McCain of telling, the Obama campaign provided evidence that McCain in July 2008 told La Raza that he would have voted for the DREAM act, a bill that provides scholarships for the children of illegal immigrants, even thought he earlier in the campaign season said he would have voted against the bill.

Let’s delver further into this.

In the November 2007, Myrtle Beach Sun-News, McCain said of the DREAM Act, which he had cosponsored in the past, “I think it has certain virtues associated with it. And I think other things have virtues associated with it. But the message is they want the borders secured first.”

The newspaper noted that McCain said he’d vote against a temporary worker program, even though he supports the idea. “I will vote against anything until we secure the borders,” he said. “There is no way we’re going to enact piecemeal immigration reform.”

Before La Raza, McCain was asked by a young Latina if he’d support the DREAM Act, and he said, “Yes. Yes.”

The full exchange, however, goes like this:

QUESTIONER: Hi. I’m a part of One Dream 2009 and I am one of the 6 million who either have an undocumented parent or is undocumented and I wanted to know if you would support humanity all around the world and support our Dream Act that we are trying to pass.

MCCAIN: Yes. Yes. Thank you. But I will also enforce the existing laws of a country. And a nation’s first requirement is the nation’s security, and that’s why we have to have our borders secured. But, we can have a way and a process of people obtaining citizenship in this country. And, we cannot penalize people who come here legally and people who wait legally. And so, that’s a fundamental principle on which we have to operate. Thank you.

The Obama campaign also provided a number of seemingly conflicting comments McCain has made about offering greater funding for education programs in the No Child Left Behind act — telling the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in June that he “would fully fund those programs that have never been fully funded,” while not suggesting any greater funding for the bill when he’s talked about education in front of whiter audiences.

That ignores the fact that McCain has suggested reallocating the way the $23 billion for NCLB is spent.

McCain has changed his rhetoric and his emphasis when discussing immigration after almost losing the GOP presidential nomination because of it.

He now says the borders must be secured before anything else happens. And in that, he’s opened himself up to charges of flip-flopping, though the Obama campaign is quoting him selectively and unfairly to make their points.

The greater implication the ad makes, however, is that McCain is no friend to Latinos at all, beyond issues of funding the DREAM act or how NCLB money is distributed. By linking McCain to Limbaugh’s quotes, twisting Limbaugh’s quotes, and tying McCain to more extremist anti-immigration voices, the Obama campaign has crossed a line into misleading the viewers of its new TV ad. In Spanish, the word is erróneo.

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The Left’s New Line On Iraq

When liberals thought it was politically expedient to declare Iraq lost, that was what they did. Liberal after liberal after liberal told us that we could not win in Iraq, that the surge was a waste of time, and that we should leave ASAP.

For example, there’s Time’s Joe Klein. Klein, like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, supported the war in Iraq initially — when it was politically popular — and then changed his position later when the political winds blew the other way.

By January of 2007 Klein was in full “cut and run mode” and writing things like this,

“Pelosi’s right, though: it’s too late for a surge. Instead of putting all its brainpower into surging, the military should be focusing on how to get our conventional forces out (and leave our unconventional forces in the neighborhood) in a way that prevents an all-out regional conflict.”

For the record, I’m outraged Bush is ignoring the election results and the reality on the ground in Iraq. I think he is sending more young American lives into an impossible situation.

Now, here’s Joe Klein yesterday at Time’s Swampland blog,

The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be “lost” at this point. The reality is that no matter who is elected President, we are looking at a residual U.S. force of 30-50,000 by 2011 (a year ahead of the previous schedule).

So initially, it was “too late” for a surge and the situation was “impossible,” so we needed to leave as quickly as possible. Now, it’s impossible to lose, so we need to leave as quickly as possible.

Incidentally, this is exactly the same line of reasoning that Barack Obama has been using. He opposed the surge and believed we should leave Iraq in 16 months because the situation was unwinnable. Now, his new line is that we should leave in 16 months because things are going so well that they won’t need us — and ironically, Klein’s post yesterday was sharply critical of John McCain for having the chutzpah to tell the truth about Barack Obama.

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

If anything, McCain’s comments were too limited because they apply just as aptly to Klein and most of the other big name political pundits on the Left, who have consistently and soullessly been putting politics ahead of the good of their country and winning the war in Iraq for years.

PS: I would be thrilled if we actually could have 30,000-50,000 troops in Iraq by 2001, but that’s a decision that should be made after consultation with our generals, based on the situation on the ground, not a decision that should be made based on political calculations designed to move votes for the 2008 election.

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A Tactical Leap of Faith

The latest findings of the Pew Forum’s massive and indispensable U.S. Religious Landscape Survey reveal some intriguing confusion among Americans on cosmic issues. About 13 percent of evangelicals, it turns out, don’t believe in a personal God, leading to a shameful waste of golf time on Sunday mornings. And 9 percent of atheists report that they are skeptical of evolution. Are there atheist creationists?
On the relation of faith to politics, two points stand out in the survey:
First, there is a clear connection between piety — praying often and attending worship services frequently — and political conservatism across nearly every religious tradition. Seventy-three percent of evangelicals who attend services at least once a week believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases; among more loosely affiliated evangelicals, the figure is 45 percent. Jews who pray daily are twice as likely to call themselves political conservatives.
Second, religiously conservative people have more in common with the general public on political issues than some liberals and conservatives assume. Fifty-seven percent of evangelicals agree that “government should do more to help needy Americans, even if it means going deeper into debt.” More than half of evangelicals believe that stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost. And though 50 percent of evangelicals still identify themselves as Republicans, that number has declined amid the broader trend of political alienation and restlessness.
Barack Obama’s campaign looks at this political diversity and sees opportunity. His advisers report to me that the candidate’s evangelical outreach is deeply in earnest — a long-term personal goal, not a political ploy. Obama is as comfortable with the language of personal religious commitment as was Jimmy Carter — a facility that usually comes with sincerity. His recent meeting with 30 major religious leaders in Chicago was, by most accounts, a constructive success. His staff has conducted more than 200 American Values Forums — faith-based town halls — and plans to hold house parties and dorm meetings on similar themes.
But along with these advantages, Obama has challenges, particularly when it comes to evangelical outreach.
As James Dobson has inartfully pointed out, Obama is not a traditional evangelical when it comes to biblical interpretation and certain moral issues. But this should hardly surprise us, since Obama has never claimed to be. He came to faith in the United Church of Christ, one of America’s defining liberal denominations — the first to ordain women (in 1853) and to endorse same-sex marriage (in 2005). Obama is properly understood as a man of the religious left, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. According to a recent poll by Calvin College’s Henry Institute, Obama has expanded his appeal among mainline Protestants (who, it is often forgotten, are traditionally Republican). But he also seems determined to call an evangelical bluff: Since you now praise King as a model of religious involvement in politics, you need at least to consider me.
The greatest obstacle to this consideration is abortion. I’ve seen no good evidence that evangelicals are becoming less pro-life (a previous Pew poll indicated that young evangelicals are actually more pro-life than their elders). To blunt this issue, Obama calls attention to his views on adoption, teen pregnancy and the sacredness of sex. He insists he is open to late-term abortion restrictions, if they are accompanied by broad exceptions for the health of the mother. But when the up-or-down political decisions came, Obama would not support a ban on partial-birth abortion or even legal protections for infants who are born alive after the procedure.
An evangelical vote for Obama requires a large mental adjustment: “I like his views on poverty or torture or climate change, even though he cannot bring himself to oppose the most brutal form of abortion.” This may work for some, particularly more loosely affiliated evangelicals. But for most pro-life people, the protection of innocent life is not one issue among many, it is the most basic, foundational commitment of a just society. And John McCain has his own appeal to these voters — remaining pro-life while opposing torture, addressing climate change and championing human rights in places such as Burma and Sudan. So far, McCain’s support among evangelicals is holding up — a recent poll shows McCain with a three to one advantage over Obama.
In today’s environment of discontent and reassessment, a Democratic presidential candidate might achieve a historic political breakthrough with religious voters. Obama has great advantages in this attempt — except on the issue that matters most.

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OBAMA CAMPAIGN GIVES UP ON FINDING ‘MR. WRIGHT’

Whew! I’m certainly glad to hear the “snippets” from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons “in context.”

In the famous B. Hussein Obama speech that sent a tingle down Chris Matthews’ leg, Obama dismissed the clips of Rev. Wright being played on TV as mere “snippets.” He claimed the media were highlighting Wright’s “most offensive words,” complaining that they had been played endlessly, as if repetition were the problem with the statement: “GOD DAMN AMERICA!”

It’s absolutely unheard of to repeat passages from famous speeches. In fact, I have a dream that we will not do that. Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask that the media stop replaying “snippets.” All we have to fear is repetition itself, because we are the people we’ve been waiting for to tear down that wall of endless repetition.

So, like I said: Whew. At last Rev. Wright’s “snippets” have been put in a healing context. In two speeches and one uxorious interview with PBS’ Bill Moyers over the past few days, Rev. Wright had plenty of time to lay out the lush analytical context of his remarks.

In his speech to the National Press Club on Monday, for example, Wright described America as a country of “segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and the separate-but-equal fantasy.” Then he ran outside to feed more quarters into the meter where his time machine was parked.

Wright described this as a country that supported the “racist regime of South Africa” and “the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries” — as opposed to the Sandinistas, who were equal-opportunity murderers with a more diverse group of victims.

He said this is a country that “cuts food stamps and spends billions fighting in an unjust war in Iraq,” neglecting to add that before you can cut the food stamp program, you must have a country that has a food stamp program.

He said we are a country that sent “over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.” And Wright said it is a country “where I can worship God on Sunday morning wearing a black clergy robe and kill others on Sunday evening wearing a white Klan robe.” (Unless, like me, you do all your Klan-related murdering on “casual Fridays.”)

And, to listen to Wright, those were the “U.S. of KKK A.’s” good points! (Is it just me, or does Rev. Wright sound kind of bitter these days? I sure hope he doesn’t have a gun.)

He clarified his Sept. 16, 2001, sermon, in which he said that on 9/11 “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” by saying: “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.” I’m glad to get the full context on that because I had thought he was talking about chicken farming.

Actually, that’s pretty much the way I took it even when presented as a “snippet.”

Rev. Wright also put into context his church giving an award to fellow Obama supporter Louis Farrakhan by saying: “He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century. That’s what I think about him. … I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan.”

Why did Rev. Wright’s supporters think it would be helpful to hear longer versions of the “snippets”?

Curiously, Rev. Wright complained that “everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago” — especially those damn East Coast, money-grubbing Jews, he carelessly added. This from a man whose entire oeuvre is based on reveling in what happened in this country 250 years ago.

Rev. Wright clarified his statement, “GOD DAMN AMERICA!” by explaining: “God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something — and d-e-m-n, ‘demn,’ is where we get the word ‘damn.’ God damns some practices.”

Well, that changes the meaning entirely.

One begins to suspect that the Clintons, flush with those megamillions they got from selling their previous tenancy at the White House, have put the reverend on staff. I believe this used to be called “walking around money.”

Obama said the Rev. Wright he heard defending himself on Monday was not the Rev. Wright he met 20 years ago. This is the political equivalent of the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech. He might just as well have said, “I love Rev. Wright. I’m just not in love with him anymore. Hey, can I have my CDs back?”

If it takes Obama 20 years to notice that his pastor is a traitorous, racist nut-job, it will probably take him his full term of office to realize that the U.S. has been invaded and subdued by al-Qaida. Let’s just hope President Obama pays closer attention during national security briefings than he did during 20 years of the Rev. Wright’s church services.

The only good news for the Obama campaign this week is that Obama admitted that his relationship with Rev. Wright is “a legitimate political issue,” which at least makes him smarter than John McCain, who just last week denounced the North Carolina Republicans for an ad mentioning Obama’s raving lunatic pastor.

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Restrain judicial activism

John McCain’s graceful and serious speech this week at Wake Forest University puts one of the most important issues of 2008 squarely in focus. Will social policy in the USA continue to be made by panels of unelected judges with lifetime tenure, or will we have a judiciary governed by self-restraint and fidelity to the rule of law?

With clarity as well as a personal history of fairness in judicial matters, McCain laid out the case for a judicial branch that rises above political strife but does not undermine representative government. To some critics of his view that judges should interpret and not make the law, the debate is merely about different forms of judicial activism — liberal vs. conservative.

American history powerfully refutes that view. The Federalist Papers set forth the argument that the judicial branch of the national government would be the “least dangerous” to liberty. This would happen not because that branch would be filled with the wisest and most learned citizens, but because of its limited powers. In Alexander Hamilton’s famous words, the federal courts would have “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”

Those words are carefully and perfectly chosen. Force — the police power — is a feature of the executive branch; will is the voice of the people through their elected officials.

Through the centuries, overreaching judges have attempted to seize power on questions that span the social and political spectrum. Activist U.S. Supreme Courts gave a green light to slavery in 1857 and to child labor in 1905, overturning duly enacted laws.

In our time, the Supreme Court has given the nation abortion on demand, thereby creating a national issue and actually delaying — because it doubted — the ability of the American people to reason together to solutions. Today, various courts claim the power to levy taxes, strike down the national motto, remake the institution of marriage, seize private property for non-public purposes, and run state agencies.

John McCain has pledged to nominate qualified judges who will leave the legislating to the people. This isn’t a campaign plank; it is one of our nation’s core ideas.

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Run, Condi, Run!

Oh, please; oh, please; oh, please. I know it’s undignified to beg, but please let John McCain pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate.

I know that this campaign has already bestowed an embarrassment of riches upon those of us who are paid to watch and listen. With its vivid, compelling characters, its abrupt reversals of fortune and its ever-rising stakes, the presidential contest has been the best reality show on television. It seems almost greedy to hope for yet another infusion of star power so late in the season.

And, yes, I’m aware that it probably won’t happen. Then again, this campaign season hasn’t shown much regard for probability. A couple of years ago, what sort of odds could you have gotten from Vegas bookmakers on the scenario that Barack Obama, the first viable black presidential contender, would be leading Hillary Clinton, the first viable female candidate, for the chance to run against McCain, long considered a pariah by his party’s activist base?

Rice’s name was tossed into the mix by Dan Senor, a Republican “strategist” who is best known for his “What, me worry?” performances a few years ago as spokesman for the U.S. civilian authority in Iraq. On ABC’s “This Week,” Senor noted that Rice recently appeared at one of right-wing activist Grover Norquist‘s regular meetings for the conservative “chattering class” — an unusual foray into domestic politics for a sitting secretary of state — and claimed that Rice “has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning” for a spot on the ticket with McCain.

The notion drew laughter from Sean McCormack, Rice’s spokesman, who told reporters that if Rice is indeed campaigning for the vice presidential nomination, “she’s the last one to know about it.” Then he dusted off the formulation that Rice always uses to deflect questions about her possible political ambitions, which is to ask “how many ways” she can say no.

The thing is, though, that — understandably — Rice doesn’t go all the way and make an airtight, Shermanlike statement. Why should she foreclose her options? Given the craziness of this political year, who knows what might happen? And looking down the road, the quiet groves of academe — where she vows to retire, like a latter-day Cincinnatus — may prove less than stimulating after the heady experience of running the world. I’ve always thought it more likely that she would eventually be tempted to run for the Senate from California, rather than jump right into presidential politics.

Asked about picking the nation’s top diplomat as his running mate, McCain was diplomatic — but totally noncommittal. “I think she’s a great American,” he said. “I think there’s very little that I can say that isn’t anything but the utmost praise for a great American citizen.”

She wouldn’t bring any political base to the ticket, since she doesn’t have one. She wouldn’t bring any regional advantage, since McCain is almost certain to beat either Democrat in Rice’s native state of Alabama, and almost certain to lose to either Democrat in Rice’s adopted state of California. And while McCain has tied his candidacy to the Iraq occupation, he maintains some distance from the Bush administration by charging that until recently the war was woefully mismanaged. Rice, as national security adviser in Bush’s first term, was one of the mismanagers.

She would, however, provide three things that McCain could really use: relative youth, undeniable pizzazz and photogenic diversity. The Republican Party is in danger of presenting a ticket that looks like a tintype portrait of yesterday — while the Democratic Party shows the nation a YouTube video of tomorrow.

All right, there’s another problem. Rice has described herself as “mildly pro-choice” on abortion and pronounced her support for affirmative action “if it does not lead to quotas.” Given McCain’s apostate views on immigration, global warming and campaign finance, it’s hard to see how he could pick someone with so little regard for the Republican Party’s bedrock views.

So I won’t hold my breath. But I can’t help but imagine having another controversial, larger-than-life character wade into the fray, one who not only raises McCain’s big wager on Iraq but also takes us further into terra incognita on issues of race and gender. Whatever you think of Condoleezza Rice, she’s a formidable woman with more qualifications than almost any other vice presidential choice I can think of. We’d get to watch another brilliant political novice try to take the country by storm. And, as a bonus, there would be the piano recitals, the early-morning workouts, the skybox appearances at football games, the impromptu lectures on Russian history (in Russian), the daily fashion show. . . . Pleeeeeease?

By Eugene Robinson

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