good article on Obama at Notre Dame

When a few protesters interrupted President Obama's speech at the Notre Dame graduation by shouting, "Stop killing our children!" the student body replied by chanting, "Yes, we can."

This inadvertent juxtaposition of messages was, perhaps, not the best way to placate traditional Catholics."\

The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy...

Psalm 37:14

Obama to end abortion funds ban

Senator Expedience

Sen. X had promised to use public financing, but now he has opted to go back on his word. This upsets me in so many ways.

One, lying is bad enough.

Two, although we’ve come to expect promise-breaking from pols, it’s particularly egregious coming from Sen. New Kind of Politics.

Three, promise-breaking on this particular issue is so symbolic, because everyone knows campaign finance is at or near the heart of the worst problems in politics.

Four, the rationale for this promise-breaking is utterly clear: Sen. Expedience realized he could raise way more private money than Sen. McCain, and public financing would have taken away this advantage.

I'm utterly and bitterly disappointed in Sen. Obama, which probably means he'll win.

Obama vs. McCain

I’m really not sure what’s right in this election, and I tend to be anxious about what to do with my vote. But I realized that the thing I can do, more important than voting, is to pray.

We can pray that God give us a righteous, just, good President; we can pray that God’s will be done. And, amazingly, we actually have more influence with the Sovereign of the universe than we do at our ballot boxes.

As much as I like the guy, I don't think I can vote for Obama.

Two primary reasons: 1) it's wrong to abandon our efforts in Iraq at this point; 2) abortion is a categorical evil, and Obama supports it.

I even donated $30 to his campaign, but as I go along, I just don't see how I can punch the ticket for him.

I guess one other thing is that his billing as a truth teller is starting to seem to me somewhat overstated.

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On Abortion

Evangelicals no longer report that abortion is their number one political issue; instead that spot is reserved for poverty. Paying attention to poverty must be a good thing.

But it’s a bad thing to forget about abortion:

“In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. From 1973 through 2005, more than 45 million legal abortions occurred.” http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

This is speculation, and I may be wrong. But I have a somewhat half-cynical view about the shift in Christian’s political priorities. The non-cynical half is represented by what I said at first.

Concern for the poor is absolutely good.

But.

I also suspect there is a spirit of acquiescence, accommodation, and appeasement to this shift. Or in other words, cowardice. Christians, like everyone, want to be widely accepted. We all love to be popular; we all hate to be unpopular. Christians know that their popularity will not suffer, and will probably be improved, by paying attention solely to the poor (unless they get extremely zealous about it to a point not yet reached or even approached; I'm talking universal housing or something nutty). And they also know their popularity will suffer if they are vocal about opposing abortion—it puts them back in that 90s, Jerry Falwell camp that they’ve tried so hard to get away from.

We have feet of clay, and everything we do is a mixed effort of both good and bad. Our current shifting political priorities will be not be unique in this regard. I’m not unsympathetic to the conversations we had in the 1990s and early 2000s along the lines of ‘aren’t we supposed to care for the poor, and don’t the Democrats do that better?’ But, for all of the progressive thinking that may be good for the Church, and for all the rightly acknowledged nuance there is to the issues, here’s all I’m saying:

45 million abortions since 1973 is an outrageous categorical evil. Low taxes on the rich are not.

Sen. Obama, for U.S. Poet Laureate

I’m concerned Obama has ceded too much ground in his recent description of his idea of being president as “one who has vision, not one who manages the bureaucracy.” Last night, Sen. Clinton saw this opening and said, ‘no, you need someone to run the gov’t, and that’s me.’ Obama then talked about how he’s not that organized, and can’t find all his papers, but he has good people who do that for him. But this just made him sound like the absent minded professor – brilliant, sure, but competent to run the country – he’s not competent to find his check book! It concerns me for his campaign, and it even concerns me a little bit as to whether he’s actually “ready,” in Clinton’s terms.

He needs to reassert his competence to run the show, not just “inspire people.” If I’d been him, I’d have said, “Hillary would make a great manager, and when I’m President, I’ll certainly appoint her to my cabinet.”

If I were Hillary, I would have promised that when I’m president, I’ll make Barack the U.S. Poet Laureate.

Obama vs. McCain

To me these are the two candidates I’d most like to see become president, but I’m torn over who I’d prefer if it came down to the two of them in the general.

I’ve liked Obama for a long time, and I’ve even given him money, which is something I’ve never done for any pol before. Basically, I just like his personality, and I honestly could imagine him making a huge difference to the U.S. political scene and to the world. But, I don’t really love any of his policy positions—and I hate one of them, namely ‘pro-choice.’ This may sound lofty, but I could actually imagine him creating a political scene where it was more possible for our nation to become pro-life just by putting an end to the hard-core partisanship that we’ve currently got.

Meanwhile, you can’t help but respect John McCain for his history of service and independence. If there’s one thing you could do to fix U.S. politics, it would be campaign finance reform, and he’s been a leader on this front for a long time. Further, he’s anti-Roe v. Wade. Conservatives made a major and costly investment in the Bush Administration, and the only really good thing to come out of it was getting a few judges on the Supreme Court who might overrule Roe. But if we stop short now, it won’t happen—and we’re actually pretty close. A McCain presidency just might do it. And another issue is Iraq: I’m in the Colin Powell camp here, “you break it, you buy it.” And we definitely broke it, but now we’re actually making progress fixing it because of the Surge. McCain is a candidate, despite tremendous popular opposition (which speaks to his courage and character), who has committed to seeing through what we started in Iraq. I didn’t agree with going into Iraq, but since we did I think it’s our responsibility to stick it out.

So, I have a lot more concrete reasons to vote for McCain – but I really, really want to see an Obama presidency.

Interview with Sen. Obama

This morning I caught a bit of an interview with Sen. Obama. He briefly discussed what he prays each night and said that he asks ‘for the safety of his family, the forgiveness for his screw-ups, and that he be an instrument of God’s will.’

Good prayers, I think.

He elaborated a bit about praying to be used by God saying 'you've got to have a bit of megalomania to think you should be the president of the United States. But, still, it's got to be about more than you ... a bigger purpose.'

I really like this level of self-awareness and vision that he has.

In praise of President Bush

President Bush has been exactly what Evangelicals voted for, particularly in 2000: a staunch pro-life President. One of the things he did early in his presidency was prevent scientific experimentation on human embryos.

Now, a remarkable scientific breakthrough has occurred, in which scientists have been able to create the equivalent of embryonic stem cells from not embryos, but skin. While this breakthrough is new, and the long-term benefits are uncertain, nevertheless it's being hailed as a major step toward being able to do stem cell research without the dubious ethical practice of using human embryos.

This breakthrough would have been much less likely to occur without President Bush's opposition to embryonic stem cell research--as it would have been unnecessary for scientists to seek alternate ways to conduct stem cell research. The breakthrough should be seen as a major victory for his presidency.

(which is not to say I'm not voting for Barack Obama next time around)