The Upper Register Blog

Many Bible-believing Christians believe it would be a sin to vote for Obama because of his strong pro-choice position. “Don’t bloody your hands by casting a vote for Obama” they cry. Even noted Christian philosophers argue that to vote for Obama would be to engage in “material cooperation” with mass murder. I don’t think I need to post more links to prove that this overwrought rhetoric is rife on the web. 

I understand the strong biblical convictions that lie behind this way of thinking. I fully sympathize with the passion for justice that animates this concern. I am pro-life and view abortion as a grave moral evil.

However, I just hope that those of you who think voting for Obama is a sin are consistent. I trust that you will have the courage of your convictions and do the following:

(1) You will not vote for John McCain, since he (a) supports federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which would kill just as many millions, and (b) is opposed to a federal ban on abortion (he thinks the states should be allowed to decide).

(2) In future elections, you will not vote for any candidate who has adopted a stance similar to McCain’s.

(3) In the still farther future - who knows, 20, 30, 40 years from now? - when the Supreme Court concludes that stare decisis means that Roe v. Wade is settled law and no longer open for re-consideration, and there is no viable political party that seriously intends to implement a federal ban on abortions, you will withdraw from electoral politics and stop voting altogether.

(4) You will seriously ponder the arguments in favor of lawful killing in defense of the innocent and explain to the rest of us why you find those arguments to be morally repugnant. I am not accusing you of holding this extreme position either explicitly or implicitly, but in view of your overwrought rhetoric, you have an obligation to give us a more cogent explanation for why your rhetoric does not, should not, and cannot lead to such a violent conclusion. It won’t do to merely claim that you disagree with it.

(5) You will advocate that members of your churches who voted for either Obama or McCain be subjected to church discipline for “material cooperation with evil.”

Even if McCain is elected, he would probably not be able to get justices on the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade. He may be able to get a few more moderate conservative justices like Roberts and Alito, but not extremists like Scalia. In a best case scenario, if he does succeed in getting a few more Scalias on the court, and Roe is overturned, McCain has said he is opposed to a federal ban on abortion and merely wants to “de-federalize” the issue, i.e., to allow each state to decide. Add to that his stance on embryonic stem cell research, and “the mass murder of millions of innocent human beings” will continue under a McCain administration!

So, you who believe that those who vote for Obama are getting blood on their hands, can you explain to us why your vote for McCain leaves you morally pristine?

As Christians we all have to live and vote in the real world and that involves making pragmatic decisions that don’t always align perfectly with our theoretical ideals. None of us can cast a morally pure vote. We vote for the candidate we think is best suited to lead our country at this particular junction in history and to deal with the issues that seem to us to have the greatest moment. Perhaps you think abortion is the number one problem facing our country right now. I think you’re wrong, and we can agree to disagree on that. But unless you have the courage of your convictions and are willing to be consistent, then I would respectfully request that you tone down the rhetoric a tad.

Thanks.

I heard Douglas Kmiec today on Larry Mantle’s Air Talk discussing his new book Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Questions about Barack Obama. Douglas Kmiec is a Roman Catholic, a Republican (he worked in the Reagan administration), and a con-law professor at Pepperdine. He is famous for having endorsed Obama and for being denied communion by a young priest soon thereafter (but not permanently - Cardinal Roger Mahoney corrected the priest’s error).

Obviously, in view of the Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the serious moral considerations involved in voting for pro-choice politicians, Kmiec has had to wrestle with the question, “Can a Catholic vote for Obama?” He answers, “Yes,” because if given a choice between an administration that would focus its anti-abortion efforts merely on the unlikely hope of overturning Roe v. Wade (which would not reduce abortions), and an administration that would support measures that could actually reduce abortions, the choice is easy.

Here is how he puts it in a recent interview with the New York Times:

There is a widespread misconception that overturning Roe is the only way to be pro-life. In fact, overturning Roe simply returns the matter to the states, which in their individual legislative determinations could then be entirely pro-abortion. I doubt that many of our non-legally-trained pro-life friends fully grasp the limited effect of overturning Roe.

Secondly, pundits like to toss about the notion that the future of Roe depends on one vote, the mythical fifth vote to overturn the decision. There are serious problems with this assumption: first, Republicans have failed to achieve reversal in the five previous times they asked the court for it; and second, it is far from certain that only one additional vote is needed to reverse the decision in light of the principles of stare decisis by which a decided case ought not to be disturbed. Only Justices Thomas and Scalia have written and joined dissenting opinions suggesting the appropriateness of overturning Roe …

Senator Obama is articulating policies that permit faithful Catholics to follow the church’s admonition that we continue to explore ways to give greater protection to human life.

Consider the choices: A Catholic can either continue on the failed and uncertain path of seeking to overturn Roe, which would result in the individual states doing their own thing, not necessarily, or in most states even likely, protective of the unborn. Or Senator Obama’s approach could be followed, whereby prenatal and income support, paid maternity leave and greater access to adoption would be relied upon to reduce the incidence of abortion.   

I like what this reviewer said on Amazon:

So polarized are our politics and our churches these days that it takes a Republican praising the Democratic candidate in order to create enough interest in the hidden truth beneath the 35-year struggle over abortion. Prof Doug Kmiec has written a deeply thoughtful, well-reasoned discussion of why the Democratic approach to solving the abortion problem should appeal to Catholics of all ideological stripes.

The extremists on both ends of the rope have profited handsomely over the years from playing up the pro-choice vs anti-abortion debate, to the frustration of most of the rest of us. The rarely acknowledged dirty little secret is that the vast majority of Catholics and other people of faith believe simultaneously in both positions: that the ideal would be to bring every baby into the world, but that there are grave unintended consequences from trying to criminalize the decision.

Conservatives love to talk about the 43 million abortions since Roe-v-Wade, but they never acknowledge the 43 million that came before 1973–when abortion was largely illegal. In other words, illegality has been tried before, and found to be sorely wanting as a strategy to fix the problem. Add on top of that the fact that abortions rose substantially under Reagan and the first Bush, and then fell steeply under President Clinton. Now the data shows convincingly that abortion rates have stagnated under President Bush.

Prof Kmiec points out that the punishmentalists have clearly been betting on the wrong horse, content to take a chance that abortion might possibly be outlawed sometime in the very distant future, rather than supporting a Democratic position with a proven track record of abortion reduction in the here-and-now. Reconciliation being a cardinal principle of Catholicism, Dr Kmiec makes a convincing case that supporting an Obama presidency is the more rewarding way to address the tragedy of abortion for anyone who has seriously grappled with this problem in all its complexity.

Also, here is a nice excerpt from the book on Beliefnet in which Kmiec addresses the slander that by voting against the Illinois Born Alive Act Obama is in favor of killing newborn babies.

Ben Witherington has some good advice for evangelicals on how to decide this November. He says, Don’t be a one-issue voter. Rather, prioritize what you think are the most crucial issues facing the nation at this particular juncture in history and evaluate the candidates based on those issues. I don’t know if Witherington would agree, but for me, with pressing issues like the future role of American troops in Iraq, the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the possibility of a nuclear Iran, as well as the most recent developments in the financial crisis, we do not have the luxury of voting solely on the basis of a candidate’s stance on abortion or other social issues. I understand the deep biblical conviction that drives some to this position, but it is ultimately a zeal that is not according to knowledge. The values of the kingdom of God are eschatological and heavenly, and cannot be so simply translated into the earthly transitory realm of public policy and civil law. To vote solely on the basis of a single-minded zeal to implement heaven on earth while overlooking the urgent, temporal problems of the city of man is not only to neglect the common grace arena but is, ironically, to work for its premature destruction. 

Check out this piece by Bruce Bartlett in The New Republic on conservatives and Republitarians who favor Obama over McCain. One of them is Francis Fukuyama …

… the neoconservative theorist [who] recently told an Australian journalist that he would reluctantly vote for Obama to hold the Republican Party accountable “for a big policy failure” in Iraq. And he seems to view Obama as the best means for preserving American power, since Obama “symbolizes the ability of the United States to renew itself in a very unexpected way.”

In my previous post on this topic, I mentioned that I would like to see the Rev. Jeremiah Wright publicly apologize. Interestingly, last Friday on The View Obama seemed to claim that his former pastor had done just that. In response to a great question from Barbara Walters, Senator Obama said:

Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church.

Yet no one can document such an apology. Oops. So Obama’s PR guy tried to spin Obama’s words in a different direction:

Sen. Obama was clearly saying that were Rev. Wright not retiring, he would need to be assured that the reverend understood why what he had said had deeply offended people and mischaracterized the greatness of this country.

Sorry, but that’s not what Obama “was clearly saying.”

All of this is very troubling to say the least. It’s troubling that Obama is not being totally honest with himself or with the country about the nature of his relationship with the Rev. Wright and his extreme views. 

Since I’ve indicated my attraction  to Obama in the past, I feel I owe it to my readers to comment on the revelations about his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as well as Obama’s speech this morning in response. I say “attraction” because I’m not committed to voting for him if he wins the Democratic nomination, primarily because I’m also attracted to McCain. I am a Republican after all, so I would need very good reasons to vote against my own party, especially since my party has settled on a nominee I can live with. But, still, I am attracted to Obama for a number of reasons, including the symbolism of his post-boomer, post-racial character.

To begin, I have to admit that watching the YouTubes of Rev. Wright was disturbing and has indeed made me doubt my attraction to Obama. It is troubling that Obama would willingly associate himself with a man and a church that do not embody the sort of racial reconciliation that Obama claims to stand for. He not only associates with the Rev. Wright, but even acknowledges that he came to his Christian commitment precisely through Rev. Wright’s ministry. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Obama was entirely ignorant of the racist attitudes and Afrocentric theology of his pastor. Obama even admits that the latest revelations were known to him when he first began his run for the presidency over a year ago, and yet he still had Rev. Wright on one of his advisory panels. To say the least, this presents a contradictory picture that causes me to question who Obama really is and what he really stands for.

However, having watched the video of his speech, I have to say that he did a pretty good job of convincing me that he really is committed to overcoming the racial divisions and attempting to move beyond old wounds and the cycle of victimhood. I do not believe that Obama can be fairly accused of secretly harboring the Afrocentric racist attitudes that Rev. Wright seems to espouse. 

The thing that convinces me that Obama is not guilty is that he has taken an amazingly strong stand against the statements of his own friend and mentor on this point, something that I am sure was no easy thing to do.  For me, the key paragraph in Obama’s speech was the following:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society.  It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.  But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change.  That is true genius of this nation.  What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In saying this, Obama was not merely going up against his own pastor, whom he greatly respects, but against the entire Jesse Jackson generation which refuses to accept that American can and has changed, and whose political power depends on being able to convince blacks that America continues to be a deeply, irrevocably racist country.

As John McWhorter wrote today:

It must be understood what a maverick statement this is from a 40-something black politician. In the black community one does not sass one’s elders. One is expected to show a particular deference, understandably, to the generation who fought on the barricades of the Civil Rights movement. That is, to people of Jeremiah Wright’s vintage. For a light-skinned half-white Ivy League-educated black man to repudiate, in clear language and repeatedly, the take on race of people like Julian Bond and Nikki Giovanni is not only honest but truly bold.

So, yes, Obama’s speech was very impressive and goes a long way toward rebuilding the trust of those who, like myself, may find him an attractive person but who as independents or Republicans may choose to go with McCain if given a strong enough shove such as the Wright affair has the potential to be.  

However, I believe there is still more that can be done to rebuild trust. In particular, I would like to hear the Rev. Wright go on national TV and apologize for his utterly unacceptable statements. Or, failing that, I would like to hear Obama explain that he asked the Rev. Wright to apologize but that he refused, and because he refused, he is now severing his friendship with him. In other words, I don’t like the ambiguity of Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright. It is one thing to make clear that you denounce and repudiate the things that were said from the pulpit of your church. But it is another thing to have a close friendship with the pastor who said them. It is not as though Rev. Wright was merely a member of the pastoral staff with whom Obama had no close friendship. The “crazy uncle” analogy just won’t work here. This was the man through whom he came to his Christian commitment. The man who officiated at his wedding and baptized his children. The man who inspired the title and theme of his book, The Audacity of Hope. Obama even continues to say that he refuses to repudiate the man, even though he repudiates some of his statements. 

I believe something must be done to clarify Obama’s present relationship with his pastor. In my view, the best way to heal the wound is for the Rev. Wright himself to get up and confess that he said things from the pulpit in the heat of emotion, coming out of his deep pain at the racist things he has experienced and seen in this country, that he now regrets and which he now realizes are deeply hurtful to many people, both black and white. He could even add that he has begun to realize that a black man may indeed have a shot at winning the presidency, something that he deeply doubted until recently, and that his faith in America and her ability to overcome her original sin and move toward a more perfect union is in the process of being restored, bringing him a measure of inner healing about his attitudes toward his own country.

Imagine the fiery Rev. making such a speech with Obama standing at his side. Wouldn’t that be great? 

A reader writes:

I enjoy reading your blog. I am also a Reformed Christian in the PCA who considers himself a political moderate. I’m also considering voting for Obama in the general election (I can only choose among Republicans in the primary because I live in a closed-primary state), and my wife and friends and I have enjoyed your posts on politics lately. I thought you might be interested in these two relevant op-eds from today’s papers:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011003245.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html

I think a contest between McCain and Obama in the general would be the most interesting to watch. They preach a similar message on transcending partisan politics, but as I see it, the former has a lot more experience in actually doing it than does the latter. That McCain irritates some in the GOP for this reason is a plus in my book. On the other hand, Obama doesn’t generally irritate those in his own party, which to my mind says that he has not yet been trans-partisan enough. So for now, I’m with McCain. If he doesn’t win the nomination but Obama does, he’ll likely be my choice.

I particularly liked this comment: “That McCain irritates some in the GOP for this reason is a plus in my book.” Agreed. I’m sure this reader speaks for many other moderates out there in the Reformed community.

He’s Obama’s economic advisor. Very interesting young guy. Did his Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 1995.

See his University of Chicago page.

One libertarian commentator describes Obama’s Goolsbeean economic policy as “left-libertarianism”:

If this approach needs a name, call it left-libertarianism. Advancements in behavioural economics, public and rational choice theory, and game theory provide us with an opportunity to attend to inequality without crippling the economy, enhancing the coercive power of the state, or infringing on personal liberty (at least not to any extent greater than the welfare state already does; and as much as my libertarian friends might wish otherwise, the welfare state isn’t going anywhere). The cost - higher marginal tax rates - is real, but eminently justified by the benefits.

George Will said this:

Goolsbee no doubt has lots of dubious ideas — he is, after all, a Democrat — about how government can creatively fiddle with the market’s allocation of wealth and opportunity. But he seems to be the sort of person — amiable, empirical and reasonable — you would want at the elbow of a Democratic president, if such there must be.

As a registered Republican, I’ve decided to vote for McCain in the primary (California’s is Feb 5).

In the general election this fall, if Obama is the Democratic nominee, I’m leaning toward Obama. But that’s pretty far away and I want to keep my options open and see how the landscape looks then. Who knows how Obama will sound when he’s campaigning against a Republican.

If it’s Obama vs. McCain, it will be a tough decision because both are good candidates. Do I choose the integrity, leadership, and character of McCain, or do I go with something new and exciting? The emotional side of me says Obama, the rational side says McCain (especially since I see him as better than Obama on issues of taxation and government spending).

If it’s Hillary vs. McCain, I go with McCain, no question. I can’t stand Hillary for all of the standard Republican reasons.

If it’s Hillary versus any other Republican, I’m in a quandry. Do I hold my nose and go with Hillary as the lesser of two evils? At this point, I think she may be the lesser evil, given the fact that Giuliani, Romney, and most Republicans seem to believe that we should continue the Bush approach to Islamic terrorism, namely, using torture (waterboarding) when interrogating terror suspects, detaining prisoners without Habeas Corpus, and increasing executive power at the expense of civil liberties - all in the name of national security, when in fact these things hurt national security by taking away our moral high ground and alienating Europe. As a former POW himself, McCain has fought the good fight against Bush on torture and he deserves our respect for that.

I should be careful, though, about lumping Giuliani and Romney together. Giuliani seems like the type who would gleefully engage in torture and amassing executive power. In a Hillary vs. Giuliani contest, I think I have to hold my nose and go with Hillary, not because I agree with any of her policies, but because Giuliani would simply be too dangerous. But Romney is a different beast. At the moment, he is trying to win over the Republican base by praising Bush and criticizing those like Huckabee who have criticized Bush’s handling of the war on terror. But this is probably just pandering. And in a sense, this is a good thing. It means that his “double Gitmo” comment isn’t coming from a core place of integrity. Romney doesn’t appear to have any core principles that he’s willing to lose votes over (in contrast with Giuliani and McCain). He will easily bend with the wind to please voters. So in the general he’s likely to drop his current pro-Bush statements in order to fit in with the national sentiment of desiring change and tacking away from the Bush legacy. Thus, if the contest comes down to Hillary vs. Romney, it will be an agonizing decision.

As for Huckabee, first of all he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hades against any Democrat in this election cycle. He represents a continuation of Bush’s discredited big-government, compassionate conservatism. He takes Bush’s theocratic tendencies - which were little more than Rovian pandering designed to win elections by securing the evangelical vote - to a whole new level. So Huckabee is unelectable. But even if he managed to get nominated, and we had a Hillary vs. Huckabee contest in the general, I would not hesitate to hold my nose and vote for Hillary, because, like the disaster that is the Constantinian project in the fourth century, the cause of the gospel would not be advanced by the mixing of religion and politics that Huckabee represents.

Of course none of these voting calculations is set in stone, especially my thoughts about the general election. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. A lot can change in the 10 months between now and then.

Anyway, Andrew explains why, for a Burkean, libertarian(ish), small government, non-social conservative, it’s down to either Obama or McCain, with a preference for Obama:

I don’t expect the Democrats to be the party of limited government. But any reward for the Republicans after the massive expansion of government power and spending under Bush would be much more fatal. Because it would destroy even the potential for a party of limited government in the future - by ceding the GOP to spendthrift Christianists. So voting for Obama to punish the GOP and then hope for a revival of conservatism in the ashes doesn’t seem like such a contradiction to me …

I also just think that Obama is a pragmatic liberal. His judgments in the past have been largely practical and reasonable. He is not an ideologue. Nor is he an excessive partisan. Those qualities are admirable from a conservative point of view … And all we’re talking about with Obama is a prudent response to an ill-begotten war, some measures to tackle a failing healthcare system and an attempt to tackle the emergent problem of climate change. And all in a spirit of national reconciliation …

Put it this way: if a Democratic president had added $32 trillion to the next generation’s debt in eight years, if he’d bungled a war, if he’d abrogated habeas corpus indefinitely and authorized torture, do you think a Republican would be criticized as a leftist for wanting to withdraw troops, and extend healthcare insurance - without mandates - for more of the working poor?

… There are two possible solutions to GOP degeneracy: Obama and McCain.

If you doubt whether Huckabee’s use of “vertical” is a homing signal for religious right voters, then go to the official Huckabee site and take a look at his Vertical Day Blog. It’s pretty clear what “vertical” means:

Recently, out on the campaign trail, a voter asked if my personal faith informed my decisions. My answer was simple, just as it always has been: my faith is my life - it defines me. My faith doesn’t influence my decisions, it drives them.

Or take these quotes from a video of his “Pastors and Pews” speech addressed to a gathering of evangelical pastors:

The pulpits cannot be a reflection of culture, they must be the change-agent of culture …

Let’s make sure we don’t lose this great land of ours because we [pastors] were more interested in being on the stage than we were in being on our knees to salvage the great, great land, given by God, entrusted to us …

The spiritual quality of the nation is really the quality of the nation, period …

I’m  not here today … in my capacity as a candidate or even as a politician. I’m here today to speak to you, one pilgrim’s heart to another, and if you will allow me, to speak to you pastor to pastor rather than politician to pastor.

At one point he states that he is “running for God.” It sounds like Pat Robertson redivivus. Huckabee isn’t a candidate who just happens to have been an ordained minister in the past, but one who is running as an ordained minister. One who is running with the express goal of “salvaging” so-called Christian America, of restoring “the spiritual quality” of the nation, and of being a “change-agent of culture.” Talk about confusing the two kingdoms!

When picking a doctor or a car mechanic, I want the most competent person I can find. His or her religion is irrelevant. When we were recently looking for a good real estate agent, we didn’t ask what church he attended. We wanted to know if he was qualified to do the job. We called his previous clients to see if he was trustworthy, worked for his clients, knew the real estate market in his area, and had good referrals. Likewise, when deciding on a presidential candidate, I’ll pick the candidate I think is most qualified to tackle what I perceive to be the salient issues of the day. I’m not in the market for a pastor.