Recently in Obama Category

My brilliant wife suggests that what Obama did to earn the Nobel Prize was to succeed in getting Americans to elect a black man president. That's the historic achievement that has elicited many prior plaudits at home and abroad--and made a difference in how human beings around the world understand themselves and their relations with those of other races.

Second thought: I think Obama understands this, and obliquely acknowledged it when he said in his speech that he considered the prize "an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

Viz: African bishops.

Er: So Richard Cohen's wife agrees with my wife. Kind of.

The folks over on Religious Connections nicely summarize the case of the "blasphemously doctored" video of a pro-health care reform religious service at which the congregants' words have been altered from "Hear Our Cry, O God. Deliver Us, O God." to Hear Our Cry, Obama. Deliver Us, Obama." The video has gotten a good deal of traction in the conservative religious blogosphere, including from some more or less reasonable types like Rod "Crunchy Con" Dreher. Evidently, such people are fully prepared to believe that religious liberals literally worship Obama. The question is why?

No doubt, this stems in part from Obama's personal charisma and the message of (secular) redemption that was more or less his campaign theme. The underground conception of Obama as the Antichrist derives from these things, and Christian doctrine presupposes worshipers of that false messiah. Who else could they be but religious liberals?

But there is, I think, something else. Within conservative evangelicalism, George W. Bush came to be seen as a hieratic figure--"Our Christian President," an anointed leader. The most notorious image of this conceptualization comes from the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, where youngsters are shown praying ecstatically around a cardboard cutout of Bush.



You can, then, be a religious conservative in America today who doesn't believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist but who nevertheless thinks that his more strenuous followers look at him as your own strenuous folks looked at George W. Bush. There is no evidence that religious liberals are worshiping Obama, but religious conservatives have reasons to imagine them to be doing so.

OMG: Barack Obama invokes the name of Jesus in public more the George W. Bush did! That must mean...what? Politico's Eamon Javers offers a range of non-mutually exclusive explanations, including Obama's need to demonstrate that he is a Christian, his desire to appeal to religious conservatives, an interest in reanimating a Christian Left. It's worth adding that Obama's secularist base so readily puts up with this because, in American culture, black folks are assumed to be religious and to give voice to their spiritual commitments.

What really counts, however, is the extent to which politicians associated with the religious right hide their light under a bushel on the national stage. During last year's campaign, Sarah Palin's clammed up almost completely when asked about her faith. Mike Huckabee, too, dialed his Baptist ministerial past down to zero, and made sure that no one was able to get hold of his old sermons. And George W. hissef never gave his testimony to a general audience after acknowledging Jesus as his personal philosopher and savior at that Iowa candidates' debate in December 1999. For all the chatter about how the Democrats are trying to shout God out of the public square, it's the Republicans who keep their tongues zipped. Newt Gingrich's recent religious effusions are striking for their rarity.

More important than public invocations is how politicians' religious convictions may actually affect their public acts. And here, the story of how President Bush sought to enlist French support for the war in Iraq by invoking Gog and Magog is instructive (not to say terrifying).

It seems that French President Jacques Chirac was puzzled by Bush's mentioning this prophesied war against Israel (cf. Ezechiel) that he instructed his people to find out what the hell Bush was talking about. Rather than have the thing get into Parisian salon circles, they contacted a professor in Lausanne, who explained the Biblical references. He later disclosed the conversation in an article in the school newspaper a couple of years ago. Now comes confirmation from Chirac himself. (See Clive Hamilton's post on the subject.)

Not to belabor the point, but it does seem as if Bush took us to war with visions of an End Times scenario playing in his head. I'm generally resistant to the liberal nightmare of hordes of American premillennialists waiting on the Rapture, but when they write the history of our time, George Bush's religious imagination has got to be in there, however often he mentioned Jesus.

Frank Rich devoted his Memorial weekend column to smacking Barack Obama for going mute on the big equal rights issue of his presidency. The promised repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell has vanished down the rabbit hole, and as a succession of states has legalized same-sex marriage, nary a peep has issued from the White House. I even suspect that Hillary Clinton's decision to provide all domestic partners (same-sex and otherwise) of State Department employees  with the same benefits as married ones was made now in order to protect the administration from getting embroiled in a congressional fight on the issue. Last week Rep. Harold Berman dropped plans to push legislation doing the same after learning that Clinton would act.

"This is a civil rights moment," Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson told Rich, "and Obama has not yet risen to it." No doubt, the cause of gay rights has taken a back seat to the fierce urgency of rescuing the economy and getting health care passed. But Obama's evasiveness can also be viewed in wider context, as another way in which he is following the example of Abraham Lincoln. For a reminder of just how mixed Lincoln's performance on slavery was, take a look at Garry Wills' piece in the current New York Review. Frederick Douglass, whom Lincoln's prevarications drove crazy, gave this assessment:

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

In due course, Lincoln stepped up and became the Great Emancipator. In due course, the tardy and indifferent Obama may step up too.

Obama made his pitch for common ground at Notre Dame today:

So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let's reduce unintended pregnancies. (Applause.) Let's make adoption more available. (Applause.) Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. (Applause.) Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women." Those are things we can do. (Applause.) 

Now, understand -- understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it -- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory -- the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Who in the pro-life community will unclench their fists and grasp his outstretched hand? We'll see.

Update: Not Deacon Keith Fournier on Catholic Online:

Instead, the slick, well delivered address of this compelling orator who has stopped his ears to the cries of the children killed by abortion was broadcast globally. That well delivered speech, full of self deprecating humor, sophistry, appeals to tolerance and human rights and artful rhetorical devices, was vintage Obama. We have offered it in full to our readers. The President called for reaching some kind of "common ground." He laced his presentation to this Christian group with Christian references to the reality of "original sin." It all sounded so "good." That is why it was so bad.

Nor Dreher.

Further Update: Nor Sister Toldjah. But on second thought, Dreher unclenches a bit.

Yesterday Rome spoke on The 100 Days and found that they were...not as bad as feared. According to the front-page story in L'Osservatore Romano, President Obama has operated with laudable caution, including on matters of ethics and morals. Notably, the pope's paper found reason to praise the administration's proposed guidelines for funding stem cell research and applauded the re-introduction in Congress of the Pregnant Women Support Act. The latter, as Tom Reese points out, is a "common ground" undertaking that has received the active lobbying support of Philadelphia's archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Pro-Life Activities and certified Big Dog In The Church.

In the face of the anti-Notre Dame campaign of conservative Catholic activists, this looks very much like push-back. Archbishop Raymond Burke, removed from St. Louis to Vatican City last year, has blotted his copybook by calling down the wrath of pro-lifers on those of his fellow bishops who decline to deny Communion to pro-choice politicians. The idea of layfolk like Randall Terry ginning up campaigns to oust church hierarchs who fail to live up to their pro-life standards sitteth not well with Rome.

The conservatives who would like to cast Obama into outer darkness now find themselves confronted with de-demonization from on high and a president happy to play ball. At last evening's press conference, Obama was asked about his support of the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that, while showing nary a sign of life, has agitated the bishops no end since the election. Pro-choice I may be, he replied, but:

The other thing that I said consistently during the campaign is I would like to reduce the number of unwanted presidencies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies, which has started to spike up again.

And so I've got a task force within the Domestic Policy Council in the West Wing of the White House that is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp, to see if we can arrive at some consensus on that.

Now, the Freedom of Choice Act is not [my] highest legislative priority. I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we can agree on. And that's--that's where I'm going to focus.

Hear that, angry people?

It's worth noting that the biggest Irish Catholic in New York is no longer Bill Donohue but the freshly minted archbishop, Timothy Dolan. Dolan carried water for Rigali in St. Louis and is close to him. Albeit vigorously pro-life, neither has taken the "deny Communion" approach of Burke and company. They are Roman through and through and, as such, they believe in engagement with the secular powers-that-be. Indeed, Dolan supports inviting pro-choice politicians to Catholic campuses, just not giving them honors.

In his inaugural address, Obama said, "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." In Rome, it is Dolan's glad hand that now seems to be the order of the day.

My 16-year-old son Isaac believes that if Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Barack Obama is the first Jewish president. Is there anything more to this than Obama's being the first president to host a seder in the White House? Clinton seemed to merit his distinction by a certain elective affinity with blacks. Certainly he was wildly popular among them. Obama did just fine among Jews last November, but hardly on the same scale. At the same time, his somewhat deracinated upbringing, meritocratic progress through plumiest groves of academe, and close association with Axelrod, Emanuel & Co. does suggest something...

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal pontificator Daniel Henninger took it upon himself to give President Obama the old tut-tut for speaking in Turkey about seeking "mutual respect" with Islam but overlooking the lack of respect shown by Muslim countries for religious minorities in their midst. But, as pointed out in this space, the president did precisely that in his speech to the Turkish parliament. Calling on the Turks to reopen the Halki Greek Orthodox theological seminary, he said, "Robust minority rights let societies benefit from the full measure of contributions from all citizens."

This comment did not go unnoticed by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, which, in an April 7 report on the president's meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew, noted:

The substance of the discussions included President Obama's mention of the issue of the Theological School of Halki in his speech before the Turkish Parliament, and his further discussion of the same with the President of the Turkish Republic, Abdullah Gul. The President said that he would follow up on the issue with a view to a favorable solution for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Evidently, Henninger hadn't actually bothered to read what the president actually said in Turkey.

I guess those GOP talking points Henninger had in front of him didn't mention what the president actually said in Turkey.

Meanwhile, a week ago, former Bush speechwriter and current WaPo columnist Michael Gerson tried to make make the case ("Why Obama is Losing a Faith") that the president's moves on stem cells and abortion was alienating his Catholic supporters--based on a Pew poll showing not that overall Catholic support for the president had slipped more than the public's at large (it wasn't), but that white non-Hispanic Catholic support was down from 61-20 percent to 47-41 percent. Well, the latest Pew poll shows that number bouncing back to 56-31 percent--higher than, for example, white mainline Protestants (54-28 percent). So why is Obama regaining a faith, Michael? 

I spent last evening at the Connecticut Forum, where Christopher Hitchens, Peter Gomes, and Harold Kushner spent a couple of hours amusing the crowd with quips and barbs about God, religion, faith, and reason. On the anti-God side, Hitchens believes he has a new ally in the White House; to wit, that Obama is a secret nonbeliever who signaled as much in his inaugural speech not only by including nonbelievers in his array of Americans-by-religion but also by (anonymously) quoting the words of Thomas Paine that George Washington read to the troops at Valley Forge:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

That was from the first of Paine's Crisis articles, the one that famously begins:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

But later, during the French Revolution, Paine earned wide notoriety by attacking Christianity in a book entitled The Age of Reason. So Hitchens' idea is that Obama's doing for the freethought crowd what George Bush did for evangelical one in his 2003 State of the Union Address, when he alluded to an old Baptist hymn:"...there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people" (as opposed to "...in the blood of the Lamb"). I doubt it.

There's plenty of commentary in the offing on Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya--here's Klein's early guide to it--but I want to call attention to just this exchange on President Bush's War on Terror.

Q President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, "war on terror," and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people -- Islamic fascism. You've always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of --

THE PRESIDENT: I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.

And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda -- that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it -- and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.

But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.

I've generally thought the Bush administration deserves credit for not turning its response to 9/11 into a Holy War against Muslims, and thus that the expression "war on terror"--meaningless as it strictly speaking is--was essential to that effort. Occasionally, someone in the administration would use a term like Islamic fascism or militant Islam, but for the most part any reference to the religion was avoided.

A close reading of this exchange shows Obama taking the Bush line. What the questioner is angling for is an answer that differentiates Al Qaeda and those who collaborate with it from militant Muslim organizations with other agendas, such as Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Kashmir-liberationist group believed responsible for last year's attacks in Mumbai, whose top leaders have been designated as terrorists by the U.N. Obama won't go there. Even as he emphasizes extending the hand of friendship to the Muslim world, he promises to "hunt down" organizations "like al Qaeda -- that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it." Where this leaves Hamas and Hezbollah remains to be seen.