I awoke on Wednesday morning this week to find an email in my in-box from Hillary Clinton thanking me for my $100 donation to her election campaign. Somewhat taken aback I then remembered that after a delightful evening with a friend, drinking wine in a Tapas bar, I had indeed rather liberally expressed my largesse on-line. Yes, I was one of the 60,000 people that went to www.HillaryClinton.com following her success in Pennsylvania and made a donation.
I am usually so parsimonious in regards to political campaign funding that I won’t even put an X in the box on my tax return for the three dollar donation to the presidential campaign. So what changed? I wondered if perhaps I had been acting out a form of gender chauvinism. In all honesty I think maybe I was. I would like to see a woman president of the United States to redress the gender injustice that plagues American politics. But, on the other hand, I would also like to see an African American in the White House as proof that we truly are moving into a post-racist age.
Barack is charming and charismatic; it is easy to see why the media treat him so sympathetically.
In contrast, Hillary is frequently portrayed by the media in an unflattering light that is not alway unmerited. Claiming to have been under sniper fire in Bosnia (she wasn’t) as proof of her superior political experience, got her the lampooning she deserved.
But I can’t but help but feel sympathy for her in the face of this media in-balance. I often feel compelled to champion the underdog. Am I justified in forgiving her for having ’misspoke’ (a delightful Washington double-talk term for lying)?
Perhaps not, but I do understand that humans are story-telling creatures, and sometimes it is hard to resist the tendency to embellish our narratives.
Shouldn’t I be basing my choice of candidate on more concrete things like political agendas and track record inside the Beltway? Of course. And that is why I won't be voting for John McCain. But how do I choose between Barack and Hillary when they seem to share very similar platforms on most issues. Their similarities outweigh their differences.
So what is it that really bothers me about Barack?
The obvious answer is that his lack of experience especially in foreign policy, his weak stance on national security and the perception of him as an elitist liberal make him unelectable for the majority of working class voters.
In addition, one aspect of Obama's campaign that I personally find problematic is his appeal to faith. Perhaps for purely pragmatic reasons he has taken to heart the message of Jim Wallis, in his book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. Wallis argues that the Right has been allowed to hijack faith and moral values; that it is high time the Democrats got religion.
Obama devotes a whole section of his website, under the heading of 'issues', to his religious commitment. This significant amount of space includes 14 videos of himself speaking in various churches about the role of faith in politics. Yes, I got it, Obama is sincere in his religious faith, and he also believes it plays an important part in the formation of his political perspective. Although I personally think a person's religious views should have no bearing upon their suitability to hold a job, even the job of president, when those beliefs are being paraded as one of the issues that constitute their platform those views must come under scrutiny. The influence of his spiritual mentors cannot then be ignored, particularly when those mentors teach a highly inflammatory political message. Obama made his faith a part of the public debate so I don't think the media attention given to Obama's former pastor, Reverend Wright is unfair.
In this widely circulated YouTube video Reverend Wright is seen damning America (or the KKKA in his terms).
I am usually so parsimonious in regards to political campaign funding that I won’t even put an X in the box on my tax return for the three dollar donation to the presidential campaign. So what changed? I wondered if perhaps I had been acting out a form of gender chauvinism. In all honesty I think maybe I was. I would like to see a woman president of the United States to redress the gender injustice that plagues American politics. But, on the other hand, I would also like to see an African American in the White House as proof that we truly are moving into a post-racist age.
Barack is charming and charismatic; it is easy to see why the media treat him so sympathetically.
In contrast, Hillary is frequently portrayed by the media in an unflattering light that is not alway unmerited. Claiming to have been under sniper fire in Bosnia (she wasn’t) as proof of her superior political experience, got her the lampooning she deserved.
But I can’t but help but feel sympathy for her in the face of this media in-balance. I often feel compelled to champion the underdog. Am I justified in forgiving her for having ’misspoke’ (a delightful Washington double-talk term for lying)?
Perhaps not, but I do understand that humans are story-telling creatures, and sometimes it is hard to resist the tendency to embellish our narratives.
Shouldn’t I be basing my choice of candidate on more concrete things like political agendas and track record inside the Beltway? Of course. And that is why I won't be voting for John McCain. But how do I choose between Barack and Hillary when they seem to share very similar platforms on most issues. Their similarities outweigh their differences.
So what is it that really bothers me about Barack?
The obvious answer is that his lack of experience especially in foreign policy, his weak stance on national security and the perception of him as an elitist liberal make him unelectable for the majority of working class voters.
In addition, one aspect of Obama's campaign that I personally find problematic is his appeal to faith. Perhaps for purely pragmatic reasons he has taken to heart the message of Jim Wallis, in his book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. Wallis argues that the Right has been allowed to hijack faith and moral values; that it is high time the Democrats got religion.
Obama devotes a whole section of his website, under the heading of 'issues', to his religious commitment. This significant amount of space includes 14 videos of himself speaking in various churches about the role of faith in politics. Yes, I got it, Obama is sincere in his religious faith, and he also believes it plays an important part in the formation of his political perspective. Although I personally think a person's religious views should have no bearing upon their suitability to hold a job, even the job of president, when those beliefs are being paraded as one of the issues that constitute their platform those views must come under scrutiny. The influence of his spiritual mentors cannot then be ignored, particularly when those mentors teach a highly inflammatory political message. Obama made his faith a part of the public debate so I don't think the media attention given to Obama's former pastor, Reverend Wright is unfair.
In this widely circulated YouTube video Reverend Wright is seen damning America (or the KKKA in his terms).
In this second video, Reverend Wright, has, in my view, clearly stepped over the line of separation of church and state by engaging in an overt act of illegal electoral activity by a tax-exempt organization.
"...all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."
(Since the original composition of this Blog, Reverend Wright has proceeded in a shocking series of racist rants in which he embraced Nation of Islam's Rev. Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism, claimed that the government had created the AIDS virus to kill black people, suggested that the brains of whites and blacks operate differently, and stated that America had bought the 9/11 attacks upon themselves. In addition, he suggested that Obama's latest distancing tactics were purely political posturing. As a consequence Obama has been forced to make a painful and bitter public repudiation of the comments made by Reverend Wright.
One cannot help but wonder how Obama, who has listened to Rev. Wright's sermons for some 20 years, was unaware of his pastor's overt racisim.)
Obama has vigorously repudiated 'an out-of-control' supporter whose opinions were abhorrent to him. His stance is in stark contrast to that of the Republican candidate for the presidency, John McCain. In an astounding about-face, McCain is now indiscriminately pandering to the extremists of the religious right. According to Bruce Wilson of the excellent theocracy-watch web site Talk2Action:
John McCain, during the 2000 election primaries, unleashed major rhetorical blasts at evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, calling them ‘agents of intolerance’ and he excoriated George W. Bush for going to speak at Bob Jones University. McCain said if he'd been invited he'd have told Bob Jones, ‘Get out the 16th Century... What you're doing is racist and cruel.’Now in need of the support of America's evangelicals, McCain has publicly courted and accepted the endorsement of hatemonger Pastor John Hagee, infamous for his claims that Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans. Apparently there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came. He has also blasted the Pope for being the Anti-Christ, and has described the Roman Catholic Church as a great whore.
Less well known is Hagee’s Christian Apocalyptic Premillennial Dispensationalist eschatology. He believes that by sending money to help resettle Jews in Israel he will be helping fulfill biblical prophesy in which most Jews will be killed, presumably by the Muslims, in the Tribulation, Apocalypse, and battle of Armageddon. Jews and Judaism as such will vanish from the face of the earth and the few Jews that remain will become super-Christians who will convert the rest of the non-Christian world to Christianity. I kid you not!
Having accepted Hagee's endorsement McCain is now indebted to the extremists of the religious right. Should we really vote for someone who lacks the discernment not to make political deals with such a dangerous wing-nut? McCain has been successfully co-opted by the evangelicals into being a second George Bush.
As a believer in the importance of separation of church and state (see my post: Against the Rise of Theocracy in America) I find McCain's alliances with the evangelical fundamentalists, and Obama's thoughts on the role of faith in politics to be questionable.
In addition there are other aspects of Obama's campaign that I find problematic, examples of which can be found by looking at his web site: http://www.barackobama.com/
His web site banner has a quasi-religious messianic quality. Bathed in a halo of supernatural white light, he entreats us with the slogan "I’m asking you to believe."
He uses overtly religious language and rhetoric in his speeches, sounding more often like a preacher than a politician:
"We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
Obama, Super Tuesday 2008
"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Obama, Lebanon, New Hampshire. January 7, 2008
The distinctly religious revival flavor of his rallies has caused one blogger to note:
His appeal to voters is an archetype of religious conversion: instead of being asked for support, Americans are exhorted to ’join the movement’.
In Georgia, he directly equated his supporters with God's people: ’God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city… and when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.’
Later in the speech, he asked the congregation to ’walk with me, march with me… and if enough of our voices join together, we can bring those walls tumbling down.’
Is Barack cynically using techniques typically associated with the manipulation of religious fervor in his attempt to win the presidency, or is this a cultural-racial misunderstanding on my part? After all, Dr Martin Luther King used these techniques to great effect in the building of the civil liberties movement of the 1960's. Dr. King was the religious leader of a movement seeking social justice; Obama is a political leader, and therein lies a critical difference. Unleashing the powerful forces that religion can exert on the human mind and which can lead to the suspension of reason is an anathema to the Enlightenment principles upon which the political structures of the United States were built.
Does he really believe in the myth he has so skillfully created with the media of himself as a Christ-like figure who can lead Americans to the promised land? We have already endured one theocratic president who believes he was divinely chosen by God to recreate America as a Christian nation.
And now to Hillary and the question as to why I donated to her election campaign. Clinton’s web site lacks the slick quasi-religious visuals and the Obaman religious rhetoric. She consistently appeals to rationality; she is committed to the advancement of science and technology, to the need to reverse the Bush administration’s irresponsible war on science, and she supports the restoration of scientific integrity in government decision making. In addition she commits herself, in her 10-point plan to reform government, to the elimination of the pervasive faith-based cronyism that has defined the Bush administration. These are significant reasons for my support.
But is she really the principled classical liberal candidate who has avoided playing the religion card in her political campaign? Not quite. I'm worried about her. She portrays herself as a moderate Methodist but is in fact a member of a cell of the shadowy but highly influential fundamentalist group known as The Fellowship, or Family. She describes Fellowship head Doug Coe in her autobiography as
"a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."Doug Coe’s influence reaches deep into the Washington political machine, shaping both national and international policy. He has been exposed in a recent NBC story for celebrating such bizarre phenomena as parental decapitation by Maoist zealots, and the covenant made between Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler.
For additional information see Harpers Magazine article by Jefferey Sharlet, whose book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" is due to be published this month. Hillary’s relationship to a religious pyramid scheme with strong dominionist aspirations and whose avowed purpose is to influence global politics with a far from liberal agenda may deserve rather more critical appraisal than the supposedly non-political relationship Obama claims to have with Reverend Wright. She openly approved of initiatives such as the Charitable Choice provisions, supportive of the long range goals of The Family: unmaking the government social programs of Roosevelt's New Deal. What if, as president, she were to appoint judges that were not supportive of reproductive rights, women's rights or gay rights? Could she, would she? For more on the amalgam of Hillary's religion and politics see the following article in Mother Jones. I fear she might be more like her Republican counterpart than I would like to believe.
And so where does that leave me in my choice of candidate? Am I now ethically obligated to give Obama an equal donation? If he wins the nomination I will of course support him, but I won't be proclaiming him to be the Messiah anytime soon!
Hillary remains my candidate of choice; but I when I think critically I have serious doubts and concerns. The final reason for my support is, as I originally suspected, influenced by my irrational emotional feminist chauvinism. I want a woman to be president, and I support her because she is fighting against the odds.
