Sadly, when Senator Obama loses his race for president, many will blame racism, but this is too facile. He is losing it now in polls and his race does not explain why. While some bigots are rejecting him due to race, many others are sadly turning from him as the nature of his candidacy, the Senator’s actual politics, is made plain to them.
Of course, in a Democrat year, he still can win, but the stunning risk of a loss in such a friendly moment in history is due less to the groundbreaking nature of his candidacy, his race, than to the overly familiar nature of his actual policy proposals.
If he loses, it will be because the Democrats have made the mistake, the same mistake as the Gingrich Republicans, of over reading the moment and nominating someone too politically extreme for the nation. John McCain is no extremist and cannot be made one. Senator Obama is rapidly being painted as an extremist to a majority of Americans, which explains his sinking approval numbers. If he is perceived as too far left of center, then he will not win.
That, not race, is the issue that he must handle quickly. The problem for the Senator is that the continued primary contest with Senator Clinton makes that impossible.
Obama and Race
There should be no issue regarding race for Senator Obama. Sadly, in a nation that outlawed slavery after Imperial Russia had freed the serfs and continued segregation into the lifetimes of millions of voters, race will be an issue that will cost him votes. That is not just sad, it is wicked.
No Christian can vote against Senator Obama based on his race without grave sin.
When it comes to race, Senator Obama has acted and spoken in a way that gives hope for further racial healing in our nation. Without agreeing with every detail of his most recent speech on the topic, it still marked a brilliant and eloquent statement regarding race relations in the United States.
Having spent the last two weeks reading the letters and memoirs of Theodore Roosevelt, I am reminded of both the progress and the pain in this historic discussion. Few political issues of Teddy’s day still have the same power as race and this is a cause for grief. To paraphrase DuBois the color line still explains far too much of American life. But hope for continued improvement should be just as great when one recalls that merely having an African-American like Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, with Roosevelt’s daughter present, was a brave political move on the Republican Roosevelt’s part. It produced ferocious public attacks in the media.
Today another Republican president will be guided by his senior statesman on foreign affairs. He will not just dine with her, but look to her for wisdom and direction in the most important programs of his administration. The fact that she is an African-American woman will not be controversial to all but a fevered few . . . often found on the left!
Questions That Remain for Senator Obama
Of course, Senator Obama did not fully address his associations with others whose stated beliefs are not like his own on race or patriotism. His church, after all, does not consist merely of older persons like Reverend Wright and Senator Obama’s chosen religious denomination, the United Church of Christ, is no less extreme than the older man.
The Senator from Illinois has a disturbingly large number of associates drawn from parts of the progressive community far less progressive than he on the race issue. He has political allies and mentors drawn from some of the most fervent parts of the anti-American left. Without being blind to the nations faults, too many around Obama, especially before he decided to run for president, seem unable to see her virtues.
Jewish voters have reason to question some of his younger allies who show a pattern of unreasoning hostility to Israel. While Senator Obama made the argument that an older generation of African-Americans can sometimes indulge in damaging rhetoric given their personal pain, like his mentor Reverend Wright, he did not explain younger allies who have also engaged in some of the same disturbing rhetoric.
He also has not explained how he plans to distance himself from the confused equation of politics with theology in his chosen denomination, the far left United Church of Christ. The views of Reverend Wright are not “dying off” in that group. If anything, it is becoming more extreme over time. Why does Senator Obama’s church associate with it? Couldn’t they do good works, of the sort they are to be commended for doing, without it?
His speech oddly did not deal with religion at all, though religion was at least as relevant as race to the controversy. Since his church has reduced theology to the natural, leaving out much if any commitment to the supernatural or to orthodoxy, Senator Obama should clarify whether he believes that theology and politics are the same thing.
It is not bigotry to ask for further clarification of those political friendships and memberships. People demanded the same clarity from Governor Romney when he ran for President and he was able to provide that clarity. This is not an impossible task, but Romney was not burdened by numerous associations with individuals who seemed to contradict his own stated principles on church-state relations.
Charity demands the Senator be taken at his word when he speaks, but these friendships do raise a cloud, even if it is the size of a man’s hand, about his sincerity.
The Problem of Change
Senator Obama would be fortunate indeed if the sole measure of his candidacy became about the “color line.” If it were, many of us would vote for him. The vast majority of Americans will give Senator Obama a hearing. Race will not keep him from winning, but his ideology might.
We will measure him by his record and his promises and not by his race.
Senator Obama has promised change, but this word forces a voter to ask, “What kind of change?”
Not all change is good, after all change in food can consist of rotting. Is Senator Obama promising us good change or bad? Are all of the changes he really wants to see a move to the left? How far left?
If all the change that makes him passionate, moves the nation in the social democratic direction much of Europe now needs to escape, then United States voters will reject him.
On that ground, he will be rejected, if he does not change the direction in which his campaign is headed.
Not all change is good change. To move from a culture of life to an embrace of the culture of death so extreme it supports partial birth abortion is not progress. To solve the health care problem by socializing medicine is change, but not progress. To lose a winnable war is change, but defeat cannot be made out as victory. To undermine hundreds of years of American ideals regarding the family is change, but not progress.
Senator Obama should heed the words of the progressive Theodore Roosevelt:
“The relationship of man and woman is the fundamental relationship that stands at the base of the whole social structure.”
Senator Obama must find areas where his proposed change is not just a collection of predictable far left macros generated in the effete world of the academic left. The American people are too aware that “change” may be a cloak for vast ideological tinkering to allow him to remain vague.
For good or bad, citizens of the United States are generally happy with their government. They want change, but they don’t want great change. This is bad news for ideologues of all stripes. Americans know they have won the global lottery by being born here and don’t want to mess up the good in correcting the bad. Practical politicians, even progressive ones, know this is true.
In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for president as an agent of change, acknowledged:
“. . . there are many self-style reformers whose conduct is such as to warrant Tom Reed’s bitter remark, that when Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities in the word reform.”
Senator Obama is no scoundrel, though the Rezko situation could still change that perception, however he seems to have a disturbing number of friends, like the Reverend Wright, who are.
President Roosevelt had, until the end of his life, the good sense to distance himself from extremists and cranks in the reform movement. Senator Obama has not yet shown that good sense. If too many Reverend Wrights, men aware of the infinite possibilities of the word change, are uncovered, then Senator Obama will lose and deserve to lose.
