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Religion, Obama And Romney

Having followed Obama’s campaign pretty closely for over a year, I am probably not gauging public reaction to this Wright controversy very accurately.  Except for some of the specific videos, there is literally no new information about Wright that wasn’t available last year, and presumably these videos were available back then as well.  The controversy […]

Having followed Obama’s campaign pretty closely for over a year, I am probably not gauging public reaction to this Wright controversy very accurately.  Except for some of the specific videos, there is literally no new information about Wright that wasn’t available last year, and presumably these videos were available back then as well.  The controversy is even less remarkable to me, since TAC has covered some related matters in the past. 

Of course, I should know that having these statements on camera makes all the difference in a mass media age, and it will probably come as a shock to some people, but none of this stuff–the conspiracy theories, berating the U.S. for supporting the apartheid regime, and so on–really comes as any surprise to me.  Take the typical far left rant, throw in some racial animus, mix, and you will get something like this.  Why is it all that shocking at this point that Obama, who has clearly always been pretty far to the left, is connected to people who are also pretty far to the left?  Because until this point most pundits and journalists had bought into the myth of Obama the Reasonable, the Transcendent World Healer? 

Neither does the “Black Value System” come as a revelation, so to speak, as it seems to be for so many who have just started paying attention to Obama.  I find it particularly remarkable that a leading Romney booster, who went out of her way for months to minimise and downplay Romney’s religion, should be willing to take exception to what Wright has said or what Obama’s church says.  In this conventional view, it should make no difference whether a candidate adheres to doctrines that tens of millions of Americans would regard as blasphemy, but it should matter to us deeply that Obama’s pastor holds some loopy views about the origin of AIDS or expresses radical political views that the candidate at least claims that he does not share.  In other words, if Romney believes in theological falsehoods that are deeply offensive to Christians, it’s not supposed to be relevant to the political process (even though it inevitably was), but if Obama doesn’t believe in appalling things his pastor said it is supposed to be a major political liability for him.  If Wright is “hijacking” Christianity, shouldn’t her response to a Mormon candidate have been even more vehement? 

Scrutinising what Obama believes is fair and proper, but continuing to treat his pastor’s views as if they were his or as if they must have influenced him seems strange, and it imposes a related demand on Obama to distance himself from his church to a degree that was never demanded of Romney or any other candidate.  Frankly, I see this as a kind of bias against a religious convert–Obama is being held more accountable because he chose to join this particular church, while Romney was born into his (and, of course, chose to remain in it), which somehow immunised his beliefs from the same kind of media scrutiny. 

Of course, voters are free to take Obama’s church and its beliefs into account when assessing the candidate, and I would defend the legitimacy of doing that just as I have in previous cases, but the people who were lecturing us just a few months ago about how inappropriate and “un-American” this sort of thing was had best keep quiet on this score if they want to have any credibility.

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