It is common, I suspect, to imagine that we agree with our friends about nearly everything. Learning that a friend likes a particular kind of music or food or sport can be jarring. If I were to tell my friends tomorrow that I am secretly a big fan of, say, NASCAR racing or polka concerts or post-modern dance, I daresay that they would be surprised. And for good reason. Even though we have never talked about these things, my friends have good reason to think that they know me well enough to predict my views on such matters.
Applied to politicians, this phenomenon suggests that we imagine "our guy" to hold the same core set of beliefs that we hold. Even clear evidence to the contrary can be studiously ignored, such as the Religious Right's adoration of Ronald Reagan despite his non-attendance at religious services and his administration's failure to deliver on the fundamentalist Christian social agenda -- or to a large degree even to try to do so. (Yes, his judicial appointments were conservative, but they included a fair number of judges who were business conservatives with no religious zeal. They were nothing like the Bush II judges.) Once religious conservatives had become convinced that Reagan was their guy, it no longer seemed to matter what he did.
Among liberals, there must surely be a similar type of cognitive defense at work. Late in the 2004 Presidential campaign, John Kerry went hunting; and even though I strongly believe that hunting is immoral and disgusting, my response was simply to shrug. Kerry obviously thought he had to make a show of being a Regular Guy, and I could confidently imagine that he was as disgusted by the display as I was. I was certain that, once in office, Kerry's decisions would not be guided by the views of the voters whom he was so cynically trying to court. (This example is particularly memorable, of course, because it was so transparent. Everyone viewed it as insincere and obviously calculated.) He could not say publicly that he favored strong gun control, and as President he might not even make public moves in that direction, but at least I could feel confident that his administration would not move in the wrong direction.
Certainly the same phenomenon applied to many of the members of the Senate who voted for the resolution to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Kerry's supporters in 2004, and Hillary Clinton's in 2008, tied themselves in knots trying to justify their candidate's votes, when everyone knew the real explanation: Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, and others had made a nakedly political calculation that they could not be viable presidential candidates if they were seen as soft on terrorism. By the end of the 2004 campaign, even I had managed to suspend reality enough to believe Kerry's explanation for his vote.
Which brings us back to religion. As an atheist, I have always found it easy to imagine that shows of piety from the politicians I support are purely for show. It is relatively easy to go to church on a regular basis and to make sure that the public knows about it. The controversy over Obama's former minister in Chicago thus seemed especially absurd to me, because it seemed that Obama's presidential candidacy was being threatened by having chosen the wrong fig leaf to cover his secret non- (or tepid) religiosity. He probably was not an out-and-out atheist, but I imagined that his ties to churches were more a matter of political necessity than anything else.
When the controversy over the fundamentalist minister Rick Warren erupted prior to Obama's inauguration, my angry denunciations (here, here, and here) were ultimately rooted in my sense that this was all politically calculated and that Obama was being more accommodating to the Religious Right than was necessary to accomplish his political goals. If Obama wants to neutralize the Republicans' base, I thought, let him try; but be realistic about it and make sure that the quids and the quos add up. Inviting Warren to give the invocation on January 20 thus seemed like a naive negotiating strategy, given the low likelihood of any serious payoff and the effect that such a move had on Obama's pro-gay civil rights (and pro-science, and pro-choice) supporters. It also seemed to suggest that Obama was likely to give too much to the Warren crowd in the future.
Earlier this week, the editors of The New York Times expressed disappointment that Obama had failed to reverse one of President Bush's executive orders "authorizing religious-oriented recipients of federal funding to hire and fire on religious grounds." Obama the candidate had promised to extend Bush's so-called faith-based initiative, but he had promised to end religious discrimination in these programs. The Times thus rightly called Obama to task for breaking an important campaign promise.
This incident, at first glance, seemed to support my take on Obama and religion. He had made the political calculation that he could not be seen as anti-religion and had thus promised to continue a program that I oppose; but he had made that decision tolerable by promising to negate the worst aspects of Bush's program. Now, he was continuing his capitulation to the Warren crowd. Validation, no?
Maybe not. It is becoming at least equally plausible to conclude that Obama is actually religious in a way that goes beyond using organized religion as a stand-in for basic morality, that his moves are not political calculations designed to walk the very thin line between being politically viable and being committed to secularism in public policy making. Instead, he might have been counting on the secular left to believe that deep down he is one of us, and we are now learning to our dismay that he is not. In other words, I wanted and expected him to be a cynic, in exactly the way that any national politician must bow to certain expectations to be viable. It might turn out, though, that he was playing people like me rather than playing the religious crowd -- in other words, that he really does like polka. I feel so used.
-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan
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8 comments:
Uh-oh. I guess I'll have to return that DVD I got you for your birthday: "Dale Earnhardt Jr. Dances Postmodern Polka to Gospel Favorites."
On a slightly more serious note, you identify a difficult tradeoff for voters: Voting for a very principled politician who holds views that only partially overlap with your own means he or she will only support your causes some of the time, but you can predict when; voting for a less principled politician who will tack left or right to gain political advantage means the possibility of greater rewards but also greater risks. This of course assumes that there are successful "very principled" politicians. We tend to see ideologically consistent voting from House members in safe seats, but it's hard to tell whether such voting simply reflects the consistent views of constituents.
"It is becoming at least equally plausible to conclude that Obama is actually religious..."
But given that he's breaking a campaign promise, doesn't the hypothesis have to be that he's become more genuinely religious since the campaign? Possible, maybe, but not super-plausible, I think.
Mike is surely right that there might be no successful national politicians who are principled and predictable. I'm simply responding to evidence that Obama's core beliefs might be different from what I believed them to be. I know that Obama is not my cup of tea on a lot of issues, but I really thought that his religiosity was of the standard political photo-op sort, circa 21st century. Maybe not.
Re Chris's comment that Obama's breaking a campaign promise must mean that Obama has become more religious since the campaign: It is just as plausible to think that Obama was telling the secular left what they wanted to hear during the campaign and is now breaking his promise because he really is more religious than we thought.
But if last year, he was just telling the secular lefties what they wanted to hear, that only gets Obama part-way out of the woods on the integrity front: he was a "cynical hypocrite" then. If we think that he's sincerely pro-religion now, we have to think he either has (a) new-found religiosity, or (b) new-found integrity. Neither of those seem super-likely to me.
I'm not trying to get Obama "out of the woods on the integrity front." I wanted him to be a cynical hypocrite -- in fact, I fully expected it of him (along the lines of my examples with Kerry) -- but I'm disappointed to find out that he might be more religious than he let on, not less so.
In other words, I wanted the reality to be: "I, Barack Obama, don't really believe in all of this religious stuff, but it's necessary to put on a bit of a show to be viable in modern American politics. So be it. I will not, however, govern based on any solicitude toward organized religion."
Now, it seems at least plausible that the reality is: "I, Barack Obama, am a sincerely religious person who will tolerate entanglement of church and state. I know that many of my core supporters don't believe in that, so I'll put on a show of secularism. I will not, however, govern that way."
So perhaps the title of my post should have been: "What? He's Not My Kind of Cynical Hypocrite?"
"Obama is actually religious in a way that goes beyond using organized religion as a stand-in for basic morality..."
That religion has anything to offer in the way of morality is absurd. I know you were not suggesting otherwise, but I thought I would take the time to state that clearly in case someone were to misread your comments.
It is extraordinarily distressing to think you may be right. I had proceeded the entire time assuming Obama was paying lip-service to religion. It is probably too early to know still, but the record is mounting, as you suggest, that it may be secularism to which "lip-service" applies.
I've always read Obama's religious tendencies--particularly the support of the faith-based programs--to be a function of his organizing background, rather than of any personal religious beliefs. Meaning, regardless of the depth of his spirituality, I think he is a true believer in the organizing and positive social-justice power of religion. Working as an organizer in a town like Chicago, I imagine he saw up close the efficiency of using the Church to dish out social relief rather than the Gov't.
I think the tough jump that Obama has made is moving from being comfortable with working with northeastern, labor/democratic party oriented, liberal churches (e.g., catholic / african american church), to being comfortable with working with pretty conservative churches (e.g., evangelical). But I suppose if your goal is maximizing the value of $1 to do good, then you jump past the ideological differences and concentrate on the shared social goals (housing, food, jobs, etc.). And if this means maintaining a structure to accommodate this powerful tool (like the Bush executive order), then so be it.
So--to respond to your post--it seems to me he's pragmatically found religion, not for cynical political (vote-getting) purposes, but rather for positive social change purposes. And once you do that, perhaps the religious stuff (quoting scripture, praying, etc.) begins to flow naturally and honestly (again, regardless of his true beliefs).
thanks so much i like very so much your post
حلى الاوريو الفطر الهندي صور تورته حلى قهوه طريقة عمل السينابون طريقة عمل بلح الشام بيتزا هت كيكة الزبادي حلا سهل صور كيك عجينة العشر دقائق
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