I have been a supporter and advocate of Barack Obama in his quest for the presidency for over two years now. Many aging baby boomers like myself saw him as the 21st century version of John F. Kennedy. A young man filled with hope and promise and visions of a greater America. And after eight years of the worst president in U.S. history, we embraced him and his ideas as our best choice to lead us out of the wilderness. And we backed up that support with dollars...hundreds of millions of dollars. Americans of all stripes gave what they could, from ten or twenty dollars to the maximum allowed under law. And in these hard economic times, those were acts of determination, validation, and hope.
I am not naive enough to believe any politician, even Obama, will be able to fulfill every promise that was made during the course of the campaign. I think most Americans believed more in the core goal of his campaign which was to bring about the change that America has been hungering for rather than the individual policy points. Obama promised a break from the hard right ideologies of the Republicans and vowed that he was determined to give more than Bush's lip service to be a uniter not a divider. And over the last few weeks since his election, Obama has reached out to his political opponents in the hope that the harsh political discord and divisions could be healed.
That being said, there is also a limit to which one must go in seeking that goal. Most importantly, Obama cannot disregard the deep-seated beliefs of his own constituency. One of the oft-sounded themes of his campaign was that he intended to uphold the founding principle of our nation that "All men are created equal". And in so doing, he would seek to guarantee that no American would be denied their rights or be treated unequally from any other Americans. This clarion call was never more clearly heard than by the advocates for women's reproductive rights and by members of the gay and lesbian community.
So it came as a bolt from the blue, when Obama announced his choice of Warren. And to be honest with you, I cannot for the life of me understand why. I found his responses to the questions about this to be convoluted and contradictory. At it certainly seems to bring into question his intention to be the president for all the people. Nor do I see any gain in his pandering to the fundamentalist wing on the right. They will never support him nor does he need that support. Ecumenism and big-tent politics have their limitations. In Warren, he has chosen a man who is virulently anti-abortion and virulently anti-gay. The old christianist canard of loving the sinner but hating the sin is just another way of a parent saying to his child, "we're doing this for your own good". And if you add to that Warren's support for the assassination of another country's leader, the choice is even more perplexing.
I would ask the President-elect if he believes that if John McCain had been elected that McCain would have chosen the openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, to deliver the Invocation at his Inaugural in the spirit of trying to bring all peoples together. I doubt it.
Now for the N.A.P. referred to in the lede for this piece. The initials stand for Not Another Penny. As far as I am concerned if Obama does not withdraw Warren's invitation for the Inauguration, then we should make our dissent known with our pocketbooks and wallets. And you can register this intention at his website Change.gov.
Obama has said time and time again that he would not hesitate to admit when either he or his administration made a mistake. Here's his first opportunity to prove it.
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