Obama and the Non-Fighting Irish

No one will bridge the passionate gap on abortion, but Barack Obama, as he has on other issues, spoke yesterday for those whose position can embrace doubts in their own beliefs and respect for those who disagree.

Amid boycotts and protests at Notre Dame, the President used differences on abortion, as he did about race during his campaign speech after the Jeremiah Wright uproar, to move the debate toward "common ground" and shared humanity.

"In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true," he told graduates, "have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith...

"But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

"This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness."

A striking impression of the protest was its relative civility, with many arguing against awarding the President an honorary degree but not against inviting him to speak at the graduation ceremony.

For those of passionate faith and those with none at all, that mood change in America may be the real meaning of what happened yesterday.

The Temptation of Sarah Palin

She has become a stereotypical figure--loved or reviled, depending on the beholder's politics--but the other day, for a brief moment, Sarah Palin let herself be seen as a human being with complicated emotions.

The Alaska governor made news by telling a right-to-life meeting that, after learning of abnormalities in the child she was bearing last year, she had for "a fleeting moment" considered abortion.

Palin was emphasizing that she had decided to have the baby, but her description of the inner turmoil in making up her mind had none of the usual pit-bull-with-lipstick comedy of her public persona.

The results of the amniocentesis, she said, "blew me away, rocked my world" and helped her understand "the complexities of what a woman goes through."

Palin went on to explain that no one, not even her husband knew ("I was out-state, nobody knows") and it would have been "easy to make it all go away, take care of it."

The disclosure of such feelings answers a pathologist's question of why, given her convictions, Palin would have undergone amniocentesis, in which "more normal fetuses would be aborted by the procedure than would abnormal ones be detected."

Clearly, as a 44-year-old career woman with four children, Palin was worried about the pregnancy--as most people in her position would be--and it is touching to hear her describe the inner turmoil over it in human terms, even if only to make a political point.

By the end of this excursion into reality, the governor was back to her usual breeziness, telling the audience she had thought, "I was old. Very funny, God. My name is Sarah, but my husband is not Abraham."

But it was nice to see, if only for "a fleeting moment," a real person behind the improbable public figure.

Parting Prescription From Dr. Bush

The Administration's final gift to American health care could keep pulmonologists busy with patients afflicted by its breath-taking cynicism.

The Health and Human Services Department has issued a rule prohibiting "discrimination" against doctors, nurses and health care aides who refuse to take part in procedures because of their convictions and barring hospitals, clinics, doctors’ office and pharmacies from forcing them to do so.

"This rule," says the Secretary, "protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience.”

Abortion is the obvious subtext but, if literally applied, the new standard could allow vegetarian doctors to withhold cholesterol-lowering treatment from meat eaters and abstinent pharmacy clerks to decline filling prescriptions for birth-control pills.

But the rule is not about health care. The regulations are timed to coincide with the start of the new administration, which will surely overturn them but allow Republican candidates in the next election to claim that the Obama people are forcing devout doctors and nurses to become baby killers against their will.

Patients won't suffer, but the body politic will take a long time to recover from its Bush infection.

Clinton Closure at the Convention

By declaring "I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies," John McCain should have dispelled any fantasies that unreconciled Hillary Clinton supporters may have about supporting him or sitting out the election.

But disappointment dies hard and, at the Democratic convention next week and its environs, there will undoubtedly be expressions of lingering resentment on the part of women who feel cheated of an historic breakthrough with her candidacy.

Sen. Clinton herself, amid the consolations of a prime-time speech and roll-call vote, will be under pressure not only to offer strong support of Barack Obama but make a persuasive case that McCain's election would be a disaster for her supporters, the Democratic Party and the entire nation.

McCain's promise to the Religious Right that he will appoint Supreme Court justices who don't "legislate from the bench" signals not only the overturn of Roe v Wade if he is elected but chipping away at a wide range of legislation that has leveled the playing field for Americans who don't start life from backgrounds of power and privilege.

At risk will be half a century of progress, not only by women but all disadvantaged members of society not represented by those sitting in the pews of Saddleback Church in well-heeled and self-satisfied Orange County last weekend.

The onus will be on Hillary Clinton to speak for all of them.

Will McCain Play the Gender Card?

With disaffected Clinton supporters still vowing to stay home or vote for him, John McCain must be tempted to give them another reason to come aboard by picking Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate.

From a look at her political history, the 44-year-old "Northern Exposure" chief executive would bring more than token womanhood to the ticket. With approval ratings in the 80-90 percent range, Palin is seen, in the words of NPR, as "a moose-burger-eating, snow-mobile-riding maverick who's not afraid to take on fellow Republicans she disagrees with," including distancing herself from the now-indicted Sen. Ted Stevens.

At the same time, she is adored by the Religious Right as the mother of five, the eldest of whom joined the Army at 18 last year and the youngest a Down's Syndrome baby she refused to abort, and as a hunting, fishing lifetime member of the NRA.

With her beauty pageant looks and background in journalism, Palin would enliven the Republican campaign and bring them an activist on the key issue of energy, providing a tireless young partner for McCain's claims of change in Washington.

Unrequited Hillary Clinton supporters, still fighting for recognition at the Democratic convention, would face a bitter irony in Sarah Palin as a potential vice-president. In the light of McCain's age, a Republican victory this year could eventually make the first woman in the White House a president who would appoint Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v Wade and restore the era of back-alley abortions.

If McCain decides to play the gender card, he will be forcing Democrats to overcome their differences, to put up or shut up by making party unity a reality rather than a slogan.

Religious Right's VP Choices

If John McCain wants to protect his extreme flank, George Bush's favorite evangelist has a few suggestions.

In an interview, Southern Baptist spokesman Richard Land vetoes as a pro-choice "catastrophe" Tom Ridge and, reluctantly, Joe Lieberman, who he "would love to have" as Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State. (In 2002, they both evangelized for Iraq as a "just war.")

Who does Land like? "Governor (Sarah) Palin of Alaska...She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child...She's strongly pro-life. She's a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells."

Mitt Romney "would be an excellent choice" but "about 15 to 20 percent of the evangelical community would have a problem with his Mormonism."

Land's interfaith selection is Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor, "a conservative, observant Jew, a one hundred percent pro-life voting record," who defeated Cooter Jones of the "Dukes Of Hazzard" for the Richmond seat in 2002.

If McCain makes it, Rev. Land would look forward to a VP who might continue his weekly White House conference calls initiated by Karl Rove to make sure the Administration continues to be on guard against such threats as John Lennon's "Imagine," the "secular anthem" for a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."

But no matter who turns out to be his running mate, McCain is sure to have Land's at least lukewarm support against Barack Obama who "has never met an abortion that he couldn't...live with."

Separation of Church and State of Mind

On Meet the Press today, Mike Huckabee answered a question about punishing doctors for performing abortions: "I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that's why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor. I don't know that you'd put him in prison, but..."

After protestations that he would never "use the government institutions to impose mine or anybody else's faith or to restrict" others, Huckabee undermines that reassurance by saying he would ban all abortions "not just because I'm a Christian, that's because I'm an American," thereby consigning all those who don't agree that life begins at conception to the same status he gives illegal immigrants.

Therein lies the danger of Huckabee to the separation of church and state--that as a man whose faith "really defines me," his definition of issues would erase that traditional line without acknowledging it as all previous presidents have scrupulously done.

Even George Bush's fake piety, used by Karl Rove to swindle the Religious Right, never extended that far. Banning gay marriage disappeared as an issue right after the elections.

Commendably, Huckabee reassured Tim Russert he would include atheists in his White House, but the Constitution requires the President to be more than smoothly tolerant of others' beliefs or lack of them. If he is nominated by Republicans, whether or not Mike Huckabee understands that will be one of the main issues in 2008.

Here Comes Huckabee...

Last week's news is translating into this week's poll numbers.

A new national Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll today shows Mike Huckabee threatening the national lead of Rudy Giuliani, who is apparently being damaged in voters' eyes by the montage of scandals building up around his campaign.

Nationally, Guiliani's lead has shrunk from 32-7 percent in October to only 23-17 now. Meanwhile, Huckabee seems to be solidifying his lead in Iowa where 60 Iowa pastors, some of them former backers of Sam Brownback, have endorsed the ex-Governor of Arkansas.

Huckabee leads Giuliani 20-18 percent when Republicans are asked which candidate says what he believes rather than what voters want to hear. Fifty-two percent say Giuliani's pro-abortion stance doesn't bother them, and 73 percent are untroubled by Romney's Mormon faith, an issue he will address in a speech tomorrow night.

As the primaries get closer, so does the race for the Republican nomination.

Party of Punishers

The Republicans talked a lot tonight about penalizing people--illegal immigrants, women and doctors who abort babies, gays in the military, Islamic extremists--anybody who makes them feel unsafe or uncomfortable or challenges their vision of a homogenous, God-fearing, heavily armed America.

Mitt Romney wouldn't say no to waterboarding but said yes to Guantanamo. Only John McCain and Mike Huckabee on the death penalty made passing references to human decency in any form, although Huckabee was ready to put Hillary Clinton on the first rocket to Mars.

There was no discussion of health insurance, education, the environment or any other issues that involve American society caring for the young, the weak and the helpless. The main Republican concern for members of future generations was about preserving them in utero and avoiding government spending that would create debt for them as taxpayers.

The '08 battle lines between the parties have been drawn. Republicans will play on voters' fears as opposed to their hopes, on shutting out Others rather than caring for them. Judging from tonight's performance, they have the right candidates to push their agenda.

Conservative Blessing for Clinton?

Michael Gerson, my favorite Evangelical columnist, writes approvingly today about Hillary Clinton as “the most religious Democrat since Jimmy Carter,” citing “her Methodist upbringing as a formative experience, with its emphasis on ‘preaching and practicing the social gospel.’"

Gerson, alarmed by Rudy Giuliani’s iffy pro-life conversion, may be grasping at ecclesiastic straws here, pointing out that Clinton “participates regularly in small-group Bible studies and is familiar with the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer--the theological heroes of mainline Protestantism (and of some stray Evangelicals like myself).”

Sen. Clinton may be surprised to learn how much she has in common with George W. Bush’s favorite speech writer, in light of the fact that she wrote her senior thesis about an non-believing Jewish radical, Saul Alinsky, in what most would consider her “formative” years.

Gerson’s subtext here is clearly a warning to Giuliani to get more fervent with promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade.

Hillary as a darling of the Religious Right? Gerson had better start looking for a needle with a very big eye.

Republicans' Pity Party

The Bush Administration keeps recalling the cliché about the kid who kills his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

Now Republicans are retiring in droves and bewailing the vicissitudes that have made their legislative lives unbearable.

Today’s Washington Post reports “moderate Republicans in Congress are facing a tough choice: Stand by President Bush or run for their political lives. Votes are due soon on Iraq, an expansion of a children's health insurance program and an array of spending bills. GOP leaders hope to use them to regain credibility with their base voters as a party for strong defense and fiscal discipline. But moderates, many of them facing the possibility of difficult reelection bids next year, are dreading the expected showdowns.”

It would be easier to sympathize with those Republican moderates if they hadn’t handed over the keys to their home to Newt Gingrich in 1994 and stood by while George W. Bush has been burning it down for the past six years.

Emblematic of their experience is the recent decision of Lincoln Chafee, a second-generation product of what used to be respectable Republicanism, to leave the party that sent him to the Senate but then turned its back on him over his positions on abortion and gay rights.

The Democrats who stand to gain by the Republican debacle might want to keep in mind that, despite the horror show of the Bush years, there is no ultimate profit for a party that abandons its core principles.

Obama's Strange Senate Friend

To illustrate his bipartisan approach as President, Barack Obama last weekend named three Senate Republicans he would work with if elected--Dick Lugar, John Warner and Tom Coburn.

Lugar and Warner are Senate elders, but his choice of Coburn raises questions about Obama’s judgment and, after what the junior senator from Oklahoma did this week, some would say his definition of sanity.

In an editorial headed “Locked, Loaded and Loony,” the New York Times today decried the position of Coburn, a physician, who “stands alone in blocking final passage of a suicide prevention bill in fear that the government’s record-keeping on troubled vets might somehow crimp their ability to purchase handguns.”

In naming him, Obama conceded Coburn “is probably the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate” but added, “He has become a friend of mine.”

The loyalty of Obama’s friend to the gun lobby is surpassed only by his right-to-life fervor, which Coburn has expressed by favoring the death penalty for physicians who perform abortions, even in cases of rape, pointing out that his great-grandmother was raped by a sheriff and then gave birth to his grandmother.

Coburn has called gays “the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today” and condemned the TV showing of the Holocaust film, “Schindler’s List” because it portrayed "irresponsible sexual behavior.”

When they get together for friendly chats, they can always have a few laughs about the Republican nut case, Alan Keyes, whom Coburn endorsed for President in 2000 and who, during Obama’s run for the Senate, filled in when his Republican opponent dropped out after a sex scandal.

They have so much in common.

Fred Thompson's Conjugal Campaign

Does an unborn candidacy have a right to privacy? If so, Fred Thompson might complain about some of the recent unwelcome attention to his prepping for a run at the Presidency.

Even before announcing, there is news of high-level staff changes, some of which are attributed to the influence of his wife, Jeri.

In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza reports the de-facto campaign manager has been “pushed aside due to clashes with Thompson's wife.”

Previously, another Post columnist, Mary Ann Akers, had written: “Her hands-on approach to her husband's political operation is rubbing some the wrong way.

"’She's running the campaign,’ grouses one veteran GOP political operative involved in the Draft Fred movement. ‘It's the No. 1 rule of politics: The wife can't be the campaign manager.’

“Playing a role is fine, says the unnamed operative, ‘but not calling all the day-to-day shots.’”

All this comes after gabble about Mrs. Thompson as a “trophy wife,” 24 years younger than the former Senator-actor. But, as a lawyer who worked in the Senate and at the Republican National Committee, Mrs. Thompson obviously intends to be more than ornamental.

When the Senator makes his long-awaited official entrance, Mrs. Thompson can pitch in and help him deal with mounting questions about his role as a lawyer during the Watergate hearings, his lobbying for an organization advocating abortion and all the other little housekeeping details that have accumulated during his non-candidacy.

Somewhere along the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be happy to advise the Thompsons about the pitfalls of a two-for-one presidency.

Giuliani Strategy Going South

America’s Mayor wants to come off as what used to be known in the New York neighborhoods as a stand-up guy. His entire campaign is about character, and Giuliani keeps reminding voters that on 9/11 they saw he has plenty of it.

But as he pursues a “Southern strategy” to make the Hard Right forget he is a multiply married New York liberal who sometimes dresses in drag, Giuliani is finding bumps in the pickup-truck road and has to keep swerving to avoid them.

Yesterday he was backing away from Sen. David Vitter, his Southern chairman and wannabe running mate, just as quickly as the Mayor dumped his South Carolina chairman last month after he was accused of dealing cocaine.

Vitter’s prostitute problem, Giuliani said, was “a personal issue.” So it is. But then again, the candidate has been distancing himself from so many issues of personal preference--from abortion to flying the Confederate flag-—that it may be casting doubt on his don’t-tread-on-me image.

While puckering up to Pat Robertson last month in his leadership lecture at Regent University, Giuliani stressed the importance of optimism. If his new Southern friends keep tripping him up on the run to the White House, he’s going to need it.

Fred Thompson's Brief Honeymoon

Media cycles are getting shorter. After weeks of blowing kisses at the unannounced candidate who is front-running in Republican polls, reporters are piling on.

Last week’s sighing over his track record with the ladies as a bachelor has turned into clucking over the drawbacks of having a “trophy wife.”

On one coast, the New York Times reports that Thompson’s supporters “have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?”

On the other coast, the Los Angeles Times reveals that the former Senator-actor “accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction.”

Suddenly, the earthy, straight-shooting country-boy candidate is being re-cast as a dirty old man who talks out of both sides of his mouth about the sacredness of unborn life.

Welcome to 21st century Presidential politics, Senator. After they love you to death, the harpies will turn on you. Ask John McCain about “media payback.”

But don’t be discouraged. The next cycle will undoubtedly be devoted to debunking some of the debunking.

Bush-League Supreme Court

Of the damage this presidency has done to American society, the worst and longest-lasting is just becoming visible.

As the Supreme Court ends its 2006-2007 term, signs of a tectonic shift in the legal landscape show an ultra-conservative majority in place to curtail individual rights to privacy and protections from discrimination.

In the most striking decision so far, the Court in April upheld by 5-4 a federal law banning a type of abortion in the middle-to-late second trimester.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that the majority opinion "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court.”

In the New Yorker this week, Jeffrey Toobin notes that, with the coming of Roberts and Alito, the Court is now poised to fulfill the long-hoped-for conservative agenda: “Expand executive power. End racial preferences intended to assist African-Americans. Speed executions. Welcome religion into the public sphere. And, above all, reverse Roe v. Wade, and allow states to ban abortion.”

It took two Bushes to accomplish this. As a new biography of Clarence Thomas reminds us, in 1991 the first President Bush claimed to have chosen Thomas, who had only one year of experience as a judge, without regard to race to follow the distinguished first African American on the Court, Thurgood Marshall.

After the confirmation hearings, which he had complained were an attempted “high-tech lynching,” Thomas’ presence on the Court turned out to be a boon for the Bushes as his vote created the 5-4 majority that halted the Florida recount in 2000 and awarded the presidency to George W.

Attempting to duplicate his father’s feat of replacing a demographic giant with a dwarf, W in 2005 nominated his White House counsel and former personal attorney, Harriet Miers, for the seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor. Conservative outcry led to the withdrawal of the nominee described by Bill Maher as “Bush’s cleaning lady.”

Today the hard-right majority is still tenuous, depending on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. But with a year and a half left of the Bush term, human mortality could change that before a new President is sworn in. Either way, whoever takes the oath in 2009 will have a lot to say about American values from then on.