Obama's visit to Saddleback Church proves we force our candidates to pass a religious test to run for president
Thaddeus Stevens
Are we now officially a Christian nation?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/08/17/saddleback/
I marvel at Barack Obama's courage going into the lion's den of evangelical Saddleback Church,
where the membership skews Republican. I truly believe his kind of leadership will be crucial in
moving the country forward after the polarizing Bush administration. McCain occasionally does
semi-courageous political jaunts – he went on an American poverty tour this spring, but when
nobody was looking, at the height of the Obama-Clinton race, and (more to his credit) he visited
the NAACP last month.
But Obama's move was much bolder: Nationally televised, prime time (OK, on a Saturday), and set
up as the town hall he won't have with McCain. I think he did reasonably well, though not
overwhelmingly so. I loved his saying he wouldn't have appointed Clarence Thomas and Antonin
Scalia to the Supreme Court, and his firm support of choice and gay civil unions. He seemed very
comfortable talking about his Christian faith.
On the other hand, that bothered me a little bit too. I'm not sure why Obama voluntarily sat
down for a nationally televised conversation about his private religious faith with a relatively
conservative Christian leader, as though that's a reasonable station of the cross, so to speak,
for a major American presidential candidate. There's no doubt Rick Warren's congregation has
done good things on social justice issues, especially AIDS, but Warren has made no secret of his
extreme views on abortion and gay rights (as well as his support for the Iraq war.) Obama
visiting the church, speaking there? Smart politics. Attending a nationally televised forum,
almost as big deal as a debate, at such a church? I think that was wrong.
And while "Pastor Rick" went out of his way to say Obama and McCain were his personal friends, I
personally perceived Warren as mildly pro-McCain. I thought Warren hurried Obama through his
answers. Maybe not intentionally. He sat there an went "um-hm" and "hmmm" and "OK" and "yeah"
literally every few seconds throughout a lot of Obama's early answers – maybe trying to be fair,
to show empathy; maybe because he himself wasn't quite comfortable. Either way, it had the
effect of feeling like it was rushing Obama. Warren was much more deferential to McCain -- and
ironically, McCain punched through his answers more quickly, got deeper into Warren's list of
questions, and seemed overall more in control.
I was impressed by McCain; he was much more at ease in this setting than I expected. I thought
he used this opportunity, before a group that, let's remember, doesn't love him either, to
hammer home his world view and the specific policies he knows he and Saddleback members have in
common – from the Supreme Court justices he wouldn't reappoint to arguing his crazy hawkish view
on the Russia-Georgia conflict (because Georgia was "one of the earliest Christian nations.") My
reaction to that creepy pandering was, simply, oy. But the crowd loved it. He played his
prisoner of war role to great advantage as well.
While I appreciated Obama declaring himself pro-choice before this crowd, I thought by far his
worst answer was on the question of when life begins, when he replied: "Answering that question
is above my pay grade." That quip could haunt him; nothing is above the president's pay grade. I
think it reflected his discomfort with the question, but he had to expect it, given the setting.
McCain's worst answer was his first, when asked to name three people he admires and would seek
for counsel. He listed Gen. David Petraeus and then went for bipartisan points with civil rights
hero John Lewis – but descended into pandering by including eBay's Meg Whitman. Still looking
for Hillary Clinton's disgruntled female supporters? I pray they see through that.
Still, I'd call McCain the winner tonight. He used the forum to punch home his message, while
Obama delivered a soft getting-to-know-you pitch. I'm sure he did himself a little bit of a
favor just by going. We'll see. The Jesus I believe in wishes he hadn't felt he had to, but
maybe that's just me.
-- Joan Walsh
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A reasonably just and well-ordered democratic society might be possible, and . . . justice as
fairness should have a special place among the political conceptions in its political and social
world. . . [M]any are prepared to accept the conclusion that a just and well-ordered democratic
society is not possible, and even regard it as obvious. Isn't admitting it part of growing up,
part of the inevitable loss of innocence? But is this conclusion one we can so easily accept?
The answer we give to the question of whether a just democratic society is possible and
can be stable for the right reasons affects our background thoughts and attitudes about the
world as a whole. And it affects these thoughts and attitudes before we come to actual politics,
and limits or inspires how we take part in it. . .
If we take for granted as common knowledge that a just and well-ordered democratic society
is impossible, then the quality and tone of those attitudes will reflect that knowledge. A cause
of the fall of Wiemar's constitutional regime was that none of the traditional elites of Germany
supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate to make it work. They no longer
believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible. Its time had past.
The regime fell first to a series of authoritarian cabinet governments from 1930 to 1932. When
these were increasingly weakened by their lack of popular support, President Hindenburg was
finally persuaded to turn to Hitler, who had such support and whom conservatives thought they
could control.
~ John Rawls "Political Liberalism" pg. lx
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose that was political, or
at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent was the implication that
followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything that entered into war —
social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of operations, the use of
violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or at least accord with it. Even
though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and function in what in some respects was a
separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow them to carry on their bloody work
undisturbed until an armistice brought their political employer back into the equation. Just as
war and its institutions reflected their social environment, so every aspect of fighting should
be suffused by its political impulse, whether this impulse was intense or moderate. The
appropriate relationship between politics and war occupied Clausewitz throughout his life, but
even his earliest manuscripts and letters show his awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract — can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be overlooked, are illustrated by
his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a strategic problem set by the chief of the
Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of the opposing sides was spelled out,
but no mention made of their political purpose. To a friend who had sent him the problem for
comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not possible to draft a sensible plan of operations
without indicating the political condition of the states involved, and their relationship to
each other: ‘War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different
means. Consequently, the main lines of every major strategic plan are largely political in
nature, and their political character increases the more the plan applies to the entire campaign
and to the whole state. A war plan results directly from the political conditions of the two
warring states, as well as from their relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from
the war plan, and frequently - if there is only one theater of operations - may even be
identical with it. But the political element even enters the separate components of a campaign;
rarely will it be without influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc.
According to this point of view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a
great strategic issue, nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
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The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to overfly the Soviet Union,
China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union, the primary mission for which
the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA pilot Gary Powers was shot down
over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" . . ."How could they
count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be spat upon without so much
as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal public apology from Eisenhower
and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place . . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite having trespassed on
the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both U-2's and heavy bombers,
the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in him. . . A time bomb had
exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Washington, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was leaning
toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident . . . In public, Eisenhower
maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the congressional probe and would 'of course
fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But in private he was very troubled. For
weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His major concern was that his own personal
involvement in the overflights would surface, especially the May Day disaster. Equally, he was
very worried that details of the dangerous bomber overflights would leak out. The massed
overflight may in fact, have been one of the most dangerous actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security Agency
James Bamford
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"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human
liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest
struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being,
putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no
struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation,
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and
lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
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http://www.usaliberalism.com/
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BikeFan
> Joan Walsh Sunday August 17, 2008 23:15 EDT
> Are we now officially a Christian nation?
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/08/17/saddleback/
>
>
> I marvel at Barack Obama's courage going into the lion's den of
> evangelical Saddleback Church, where the membership skews Republican. I
> truly believe his kind of leadership will be crucial in moving the
> country forward after the polarizing Bush administration. McCain
> occasionally does semi-courageous political jaunts – he went on an
> American poverty tour this spring, but when nobody was looking, at the
> height of the Obama-Clinton race, and (more to his credit) he visited
> the NAACP last month.
Don't know if you noticed but the seats for last night's event sold for
$2000.00 - seemed to me to be an attempt to exclude young Evangelicals
who have asserted that they refuse to be the property of one political
party. Basically the event was gerrymandered to be more pro-McCain than
it might otherwise have been. Di you also notice the camera angles,
designed to show off "Pastor Rick" as larger and more important than
either of the candidates. He was obviously much more pro-McCain as well.
So, as far as I am concerned, the event last night was "fundamentally"
dishonest.
--
BikeFan
Raymond
> Thaddeus Stevens wrote:
> > Joan Walsh Sunday August 17, 2008 23:15 EDT
> > Are we now officially a Christian nation?
>
> > I marvel at Barack Obama's courage going into the lion's den of
> > evangelical Saddleback Church, where the membership skews Republican. I
> > truly believe his kind of leadership will be crucial in moving the
> > country forward after the polarizing Bush administration. McCain
> > occasionally does semi-courageous political jaunts – he went on an
> > American poverty tour this spring, but when nobody was looking, at the
> > height of the Obama-Clinton race, and (more to his credit) he visited
> > the NAACP last month.
>
> Don't know if you noticed but the seats for last night's event sold for
> $2000.00 - seemed to me to be an attempt to exclude young Evangelicals
> who have asserted that they refuse to be the property of one political
> party. Basically the event was gerrymandered to be more pro-McCain than
> it might otherwise have been. Di you also notice the camera angles,
> designed to show off "Pastor Rick" as larger and more important than
> either of the candidates. He was obviously much more pro-McCain as well.
>
> So, as far as I am concerned, the event last night was "fundamentally"
> dishonest.
>
> --
> BikeFan
Aug.16,2008 Calif.
Update 8-17-08, 7:22 AM Est NY
Arizona Sen. John McCain did a better job in the event than was
expected. However, some of his staff thought that he could have done
better since he had the questions for over twenty-four hours and had
rehearsed the question-answer project numerous times before show
time. at 8 PM. EST. Also, Pastor Rick was pleased that McCain got to
answer more questions than Sen. Obama and thought that the entire show
went in favor of McCain, as was expected, since the Republican
candidate had the opportunity of knowing the questions in advance.
Reporters felt that the crowd was a much older group than expected and
thought that a younger crowd would have leaned more toward Sen.
Obama As it was, the event was pro McCain as was planned by the
popular Evangelical pastor.
BikeFan
I rest my case.
--
BikeFan