The Warren Commotion
One of the things that we hated about Bush was his complete one-sidedness. Even in a purely symbolic way, he was unable to reach out to the other side. Even being in the same room with someone one the other side of the spectrum was not something you’d expect of him. His harsh partisanship was one of his worst points.
Now, with Obama choosing both Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery to give the invocation and the benediction at Obama’s inaugural, there is a huge uproar: liberals are livid that Obama invited Warren.
True: Warren’s views on homosexuality are galling. It is easy for one to think that Obama could have done better–and maybe he could have. But I think it is important to remember a few things, like the fact that choosing a religious figure from the other side of the social divide who hasn’t made some despicable remark about gays, Jews, women, Muslims, or whomever, would not be an easy task. You’d have to go to the B -list, or maybe even the C-list. Falwell is no longer with us, but he was the kind of person we’re talking about here. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Rod Parsley, John Hagee… you get the idea.
Another thing to remember is that having Warren give the invocation is not anywhere near the same as agreeing with his policies. As Obama pointed out, Warren invited him to speak to his congregation despite Obama’s views; this did not signal Warren’s intent to change his views on abortion or homosexuality and more than Warren’s invitation signals a sea change for Obama. Though the Saddleback invitation is not the same as an inaugural role, it’s not like Obama’s inviting Warren to write his social policy.
This is what we knew Obama would do: reach out to the other side. It’s the kind of politics we used to see on Capitol Hill before the Republicans went rabid, where politicians from both sides were truly congenial and worked well together despite their differences. One thing to keep in mind was the strange relationship between Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt. At Falwell’s death, Flynt said:
My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.
Don’t you think that says something?
Obama is trying to do this: recognize a human connection with people regardless of their views, and through that, building a bridge of understanding between them. You don’t change hearts and minds by shoving the opposition into a the corner, never showing them respect, never inviting them in.
Something that is going rather underreported is that Warren is not alone; Obama’s choice of Joseph Lowery is being almost completely ignored, as if he didn’t matter as much. Obama was expected to choose a liberal icon–just not a conservative icon as well. Wasn’t that the kind of one-sidedness we’ve been complaining about for the past eight years? Wouldn’t we have respected Bush a lot more had he done this kind of thing often? What if Jesse Jackson had been invited to give the invocation for Dubya, and not just for show? Would not that kind of behavior garnered Bush more respect, given that Jackson upsets many on the right as much as Warren upsets us on the left?
I think that what Obama did does not deserve the criticism that the left is heaping on him for it. Again, he could have chosen someone on the right with less controversy (though not without sacrificing cross-aisle cachet and credentials), but generally speaking, this is what Obama promised: to truly respect all sides as a means of winning hearts and minds, bringing them to a common ground that will have far more value, even though there will be far less visceral satisfaction than there would be if we just ran roughshod over the other side. Also remember that Obama’s skill is not in sacrificing his principles, but using this common-ground approach to being the other side over to ours.
If we want to make things like gay marriage a reality sooner rather than later, then you bring the opponents in from the cold and let them get used to sitting around the same fire.
Even in a purely symbolic way, he was unable to reach out to the other side.
*shakes head* Not so… it was more that he just didn’t care what the ‘other side’ thought.
Considering what the ‘other side’ said about him, I don’t blame him.
Oh, he made a few token efforts. One was at the very beginning, where he invited a few Democrats to visit him at the White House, and gave them condescending nicknames, for example. I do take your point about not caring, but that does not contradict what I said. I don’t think he didn’t care because he decided not to care, I think he didn’t care because he simply couldn’t help it. Bush is the kind of person who simply assumes that he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong, the kind of smug self-assuredness one sometimes sees in smarmy, arrogant born-agains. That kind of person is indeed unable to reach out to those who disagree with him.
I thought this was a really good post Luis.
In general, I’ve been thinking slightly differently about Obama.
My thinking has been that he is “Rumpifying the Rump”. Basically the Republicans are minority opposition party – a rump. By embracing as many moderates on their side as he can he makes the opposition even rumpier. Also he’s trying to be careful to not offend them in the sense of not giving them a lightening rod issue to galvenize them to give opposition to him traction in which to oppose him.
Part of that then means inviting willing moderates from the opposition into his tent. But then as I read through your description and I think better of what Obama is doing.
Ultimately we have to live together. Ultimately, his opposition needs to sense that Obama’s success is not an existential threat to them. We need to have more cordial politics.
I dunno, man. At first I thought it was part of Obama’s reaching out to the other guys, trying to set a new tone of the debate, and so forth.
I’m just finishing up reading “The Audacity of Hope” (which I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t yet read) and am struck by how much he really seems to want to reset politics and get back to a place where both sides don’t score cheap shots on the other guys.
And then… I read diaries on DKos or other spots that quetion if Warren had made motivated-by-religion comments equating, say, black people to incest or child rape or polygamy, would he be invited to give the invocation?
And of course the answer is “no f***ing way”.
Yet Warren HAS made comments indicating that he definitely thinks that:
When I read those diaries, I realize just how far we do have to go. I realize that Warren IS totally using religion to justify restricting marriage to straight couples. That’s what it boils down to, and he sees a gay couple marrying as being the same as the things mentioned. I mean, HE brought it up.
So I have a hard, hard time giving Obama a pass on this one. I will, simply because he beats the pants off of what McCain would be doing, but still…
Luis, I’ve noticed you wrote in your post “liberals are livid that Obama invited Warren” and “does not deserve the criticism that the left is heaping on him for it.” This almost tempts me to ask if this is your way of conceding that you’re a moderate. But far more importantly, it didn’t escape my notice that you used the words “liberals” and “the left”, but – whether accidentally or on purpose – not the words gay and lesbian. Substitue the former the latter and see how the sentances read: “gays and lesbians are livid that Obama invited Warren”, “he does not deserve the criticism that the homosexual community is heaping on him for it”. It’s not an insiginificant point. What you’re saying is all well and good when you take on the liberal left, a general ideology that encapsulates all races, religions, genders and sexual orientations. But if we were to take the gay/lesbian community’s feelings of betrayal into consideration, that argument comes across as utterly facile. That you didn’t directly address their concerns, or even acknowledge them, is disappointing.
Even during the flush of victory of a new preisdent that the gay community helped to elect, they had to have that tempered by watching the passage of Prop. 8, among other anti-gay marriage propositions, win on Election Day. That was a devastating blow. Obama picking that bigot Warren is another blindside. Saying “we need more cordial politics” isn’t going to cut it with people who are deeply, deeply offended by this choice.
True: Warren’s views on homosexuality are galling. It is easy for one to think that Obama could have done better–and maybe he could have. But I think it is important to remember a few things, like the fact that choosing a religious figure from the other side of the social divide who hasn’t made some despicable remark about gays, Jews, women, Muslims, or whomever, would not be an easy task. You’d have to go to the B -list, or maybe even the C-list. Falwell is no longer with us, but he was the kind of person we’re talking about here. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Rod Parsley, John Hagee… you get the idea.
But why does it have to be an evangelical at all??? We’re so accustomed to public religious figures being evangelicals that we never even ask ourselves this question, but just take it on face value. And why does it have to be a religious figure from “the other side of the social divide”? There are dozens of progressive church leaders he could have chosen, and many more moderate ones. And what, exactly, would be wrong with picking a “B-list” or “C-list” figure? (What does that mean, anyway? Are we A-listing and B-listing according to the popularity and visibility of the figure in question? I’d rather we used other methods of choosing who is worthy for invocation.) So what if he’s not an international name? I think we all know that if a little-know community pastor is chosen to give the invocation at Obama’s inaugeral, that man becomes A-list by default. It was the grassroots movements and the small donations from individual doners that helped Obama’s campaign. In fact, it’s what helped define the campaign and helped define who he was in people’s minds. A little-known but strong, inspiring, community-oriented religious figure from the grassroots would have very consistent with who we know Obama to be.
We can say reaching out to the other side is what Obama promised. But that begs the question as to his method of doing so in this specific case is the right way to go about it. No, Luis, it wasn’t Bush’s one-sidedness that appalled us. It was Bush’s one-sidedness when a clear message was sent to him that he did not have a mandate, after losing the popular vote in the first election, winning by a close margin in the second, and seeing the GOP’s hold in the House and Senate shrink and disappear. Obama has a mandate that Bush never had. He won the election by a considerable margin, and the Dems hold considerable majorities in the congress. Among other things, it was a vote against Bush and the Republicans and their destructive policies. It was NOT a vote for inclusiveness, not if inclusiveness means “a little bit of this, and a little bit of what you voted against.”
And by the way, Rick Warren is white, he’s male, he’s Christian and he’s straight. He’s had plenty of inclusiveness his whole life. Time to give someone else a chance.
When can we expect Obama to reach across the aisle like this again? When he’s picking a new Supreme Court justice? And how do we know that the opponents won’t change HIS mind on things, rather than the other way around. Why won’t that be likely to happen. After all, Obama is very open-minded and non-partisan, and you can’t say the same about fundimentalists, can you?
Paul:
You make good points. And it’s easy to see, when put in the context of what Warren has said, that if he said them about African Americans there would be no way that he would be invited to the podium.
My defense for Obama is that he is a student of history. The opposition to Clinton crystallized around the issue of Gays in the military. As I recall, Clinton never mentioned the issue why campaigning. Upon become President he made it his first order of business to attempt to liberalize the issue. The issue exploded in Clinton’s face and served as a lightening rod crystallizing opposition that never went away.
I’ve read a lot of gays say that Clinton went on to throwing Gays under the buss. But as I remember it, he did way more than anyone else had up to that time. And that issue ended up almost throwing the Clinton administration’s entire presidency and all subsequent agenda’s under a preverbial bus, it nearly destoyed his presidency because it provided a lightening rod issue for opposition to organize around and provided enormous traction to their movement.
Obama is attempting, I think, to not provide such traction to the rump opposition. If possible he wants to lull them to sleep as well as pull some members out of the opposition into his tent to further ‘rumpify’ them.
I think the Warren selection for the invocation was an unfortunate choice. I wouldn’t ever let that guy within a million miles of my administration. He appears to off beat and has too big of an ego and the things he has said are absolutely terrible. But again, I am giving Obama the benefit of the doubt – especially until he becomes President. Very little of what he has done has been wrong. I think this has blown up in his face, but despite the harm done to Civil Rights for gays, maybe it will still serve the political purpose of further rumpification of the Rump Republican party.