A Conservative on Obama

[Braggi]

This Good Friday Let US Not Crucify Barack Obama
by Frank Schaeffer
Posted March 21, 2008 | 10:50 AM (EST)

Senator Obama has a problem: the hardening of the American heart, the closing of the American mind, the shriveling of our souls, the shrinking capacity of our imaginations, our jaded senses, the seen-it-all attitude that makes us into sneering voyeurs too mean spirited to save ourselves.
I was a guest on a PRI radio show the day after Obama delivered his historic speech on race. I was a guest along with a person that the host introduced as "most responsible" for making Obama's minister's charged comments into a political football. According to the host's introduction, Republican activist Ronald Kessler used his website to turn Obama's minister's words into the story the media jumped on.

Kessler had just heard Obama's March 18 speech on race too. He said it left him unmoved. He was in a sneering mood bristling with ever-so-reasonable middle class certitude of his conservative righteousness. To Kessler the speech was just politics, nothing more. The idea of its truth was of no consequence. To him it was all about tactics.

That night I was listening to Laura Ingraham (a show that I was on several times and where Laura repeatedly called me a "great American" because, as the father of a Marine, I'd written Keeping Faith and then Faith of Our Sons, books that praised and explained the military family.) Laura was sneering at Obama's speech. Her candidate had been Mitt Romney. As Romney's self-described "conservative-conservative" Ingraham had also been routinely mocking McCain. And she hates Clinton. Now she hates Obama more...

Bitterness as a way of life marches forward on the left as well as the right. I read the responses from Clinton supporters (on various websites) also damning Obama's speech as "just words." Some of the Clinton people sounded even more cynical than Kessler and Ingraham.

Obama is the chef who opens a new restaurant and serves honest good and beautifully prepared food made of the most wholesome ingredients only to have the food critic pan his offerings as "all too ordinary." "Where," asks the seen-it-all jaded bored critic, "are the calf's brains marinated in truffle-soaked baby duck's testicles?"

Obama offers civility in the midst of a drunken national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.

By providence or blind luck, we are being given a second chance. In Obama our founders appear once again stepping from the mists of time to offer a wayward great, great grandchild an opportunity for redemption. But everything is turned on its head. Good is called bad. The greatest things about Obama are used against him, decency and transparency are mocked.

Obama stands in the tradition of our founders, a citizen running for office, not a "professional" striver. But the cry goes up, "He doesn't have the experience!" Experience? At what? Playing games with our country's soul while the only real game in our nation's capitol is hanging on to power, enriching oneself at the political trough through connections, taking us to war after war, making us hated throughout the world by catering to our insatiable, unreasoning fears.

Obama is the man who reaches out to help a dying passerby and the passerby snarls, "What do you really want?" Obama came to us on March 18 with one of the most generous and brilliant speeches that has been delivered on American soil. He spoke honestly of things all other American leaders have been too timid and self-serving to even mention. Standing behind him were the sprits of countless murdered, enslaved, tortured, lost black Americans. Their blood cries out for revenge and yet Obama offered forgiveness, perspective and understanding.

Obama is not Jesus. Obama makes mistakes. He is rightly self-deprecating. Nevertheless, imperfect as he is, Obama is offering America a fresh start. There is more decent intelligent authenticity in his little finger than the Clintons will ever know. There is more kind wisdom in Obama than in all our sneering bloodsucking moronic media combined. But we have imbibed detritus for so long that when clean food is offered we can't taste it.

This isn't about politics. I'm a fifty-five year old white man who has been a conservative all my life. I've been a right wing Republican activist. I'm a big fan of the military. If Obama can reach out to me he can reach out to anyone. He can win in November.

What I'm saying here will lose me friends. For instance the Bush family gave one of my recent military-related books a ringing endorsement. After Laura Bush read an excerpt out on Meet The Press sales skyrocketed. I probably won't get too many more of those sorts of endorsements. But the chips are down and the presidential choices this year are too important not to not fight for.

As I see it our choice is between a good and heroic old man whose time has past and who will perpetuate failed policy, a jaded woman of the establishment, who will do anything to perpetuate her family's dynastic "claim" to power, and a brilliant, openhearted new founding father the likes of which America has not seen.

Obama comes to us from outside the system that has produced our present multiple crises of wars of choice and a failing economy. He does what all truly great leaders do: he speaks to the soul in plain self-revealing words of hope.

If we squander this undeserved reprieve and choose business-as-usual, if we don't elevate ourselves out of our self-made mire, we will step into a future of steep and steady decline and war without end. It won't matter if you are right or left. It won't matter if the Republicans or the Democratic Party wins. We will all lose.

I think there is reason to hope. There are decent people out there who have refused to go along with the smear-by-association campaign. Mike Huckabee defended Obama. McCain said we can't blame Obama for his minister's words. Not everyone on the right is stooping as low as the Clintons and the right-wing media scavengers.

Obama is worth fighting for. He is worth losing old friends for. History has thrown America an unlikely lifeline. Do we have the decency, the sense, the last glimmer of sanity needed to open our hearts to change?



Here's the link:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank...-_b_92645.html
Well, damn. So Obama isn't Christ after all.
-Jeff

[lifequest]

Thanks for an interesting article. I'd recommend Frank Schaeffer's recent book Crazy for God. He tells of growing up in Switzerland the son of the theologian Francis Schaeffer. They unintentionally helped bring together the Republicans and Right Wing televangelists like Falwell and Robertson over the issue of abortion in the early 1970's. When religion seeks access to political power we end up with the disaster of the last 25 plus years.

Both father and son regretted that they were used and helped spawn a movement that left us with the Red and Blue state divide and further loss of civility in public and private spheres.

Whether Obama and the entry of a new generation of political leaders will help us shed the dysfunction and gridlock we've become accustomed to remains to be seen, but its nice to read from his perspective and look with some hope to the future.

[Lenny]

Liked the article. Thanks. Good words and truth.

But America is not run by of East Coast Liberals nor Sonoma County Progressives.
You don't say "Amen" when some else says, "goddamn America" and expect to be elected. Hello?

And I pretty sure you've not noticed?! but he's Black.

The AUDACITY of Hope
is right.

[Braggi]

Liked the article. Thanks. Good words and truth.

But America is not run by of East Coast Liberals nor Sonoma County Progressives.
You don't say "Amen" when some else says, "goddamn America" and expect to be elected. Hello? ...

Glad you liked the article. You're welcome. However, I think the amazing groundswell of popular support Obama has enjoyed (and I suppose we should mention all the *small* campaign donations) proves that something more than "East Coast Liberals" (is that a theater group?) and Sonoma County Progressives (a drumming circle?) have given up their votes and their energy to Obama. I think he is proving he's a winner.

And how about that "God damn America?" A man speaking from his heart and his personal experience and Obama not agreeing with him although he no doubt shared some of those experiences. I think it was no less than John McCain who said, famously, "I know Barack Obama, and those are not his views." Are you better qualified to comment?

When we started dropping bombs on an innocent Iraq I might have agreed that America deserved damnation. Of course, I don't believe in damnation in the Christian sense, but otherwise ...

... And I pretty sure you've not noticed?! but he's Black. ...

Really? No, I hadn't noticed. But then, I don't educate myself by watching TV.

-Jeff

[MsTerry]

And I pretty sure you've not noticed?! but he's Black.

I have always wondered why you would call somebody Black, even though they have a white mother.
Unless you are referring to his you-know-what

[Sara S]

Excellent article, and great reply here.
"Drumming circle"?
You are so funny, Jeff!

Sara S.

Glad you liked the article. You're welcome. However, I think the amazing groundswell of popular support Obama has enjoyed (and I suppose we should mention all the *small* campaign donations) proves that something more than "East Coast Liberals" (is that a theater group?) and Sonoma County Progressives (a drumming circle?) have given up their votes and their energy to Obama. I think he is proving he's a winner.

And how about that "God damn America?" A man speaking from his heart and his personal experience and Obama not agreeing with him although he no doubt shared some of those experiences. I think it was no less than John McCain who said, famously, "I know Barack Obama, and those are not his views." Are you better qualified to comment?

When we started dropping bombs on an innocent Iraq I might have agreed that America deserved damnation. Of course, I don't believe in damnation in the Christian sense, but otherwise ...



Really? No, I hadn't noticed. But then, I don't educate myself by watching TV.

-Jeff

[Lenny]

I have always wondered why you would call somebody Black, even though they have a white mother.

Not all are as sweet as you, Ms Terry. But in the country I grew up in......

T'other night I had a call from some public political survey company and after 20 minutes of polling me came the usual question about my race. I asked the pollster, after determining neither she nor I were "all white", I would answer her question if she would answer mine. It is the same as yours: what race is Obama? She skipped that question.

[MsTerry]

Obama is a Mulatto, not a black
follow the link and you'll see a picture of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto
I'm a little disappointed Jeff didn't pick up on that

Not all are as sweet as you, Ms Terry. But in the country I grew up in......

T'other night I had a call from some public political survey company and after 20 minutes of polling me came the usual question about my race. I asked the pollster, after determining neither she nor I were "all white", I would answer her question if she would answer mine. It is the same as yours: what race is Obama? She skipped that question.

[Braggi]

...
I'm a little disappointed Jeff didn't pick up on that

You have little idea what I've picked up on or not picked up on.

My point was his race doesn't matter as much as so many other facts.

-Jeff

[Lenny]

Glad you liked the article. You're welcome. However, I think the amazing groundswell of popular support Obama has enjoyed (and I suppose we should mention all the *small* campaign donations) proves that something more than "East Coast Liberals" (is that a theater group?) and Sonoma County Progressives (a drumming circle?) have given up their votes and their energy to Obama. I think he is proving he's a winner.
And how about that "God damn America?" A man speaking from his heart and his personal experience and Obama not agreeing with him although he no doubt shared some of those experiences. I think it was no less than John McCain who said, famously, "I know Barack Obama, and those are not his views." Are you better qualified to comment?
When we started dropping bombs on an innocent Iraq I might have agreed that America deserved damnation. Of course, I don't believe in damnation in the Christian sense, but otherwise ...
Really? No, I hadn't noticed. But then, I don't educate myself by watching TV.-Jeff

Well, Jeff, folks "support" Barrack out front, and I like that. Then they will go in their voting booth and vote for .....well, that is what makes a horse race exciting. And if you don't think a Black face will bring out of the hills all those folks that find it "far out", then we don't live in the same country! Ditto for the preacher man's remark. And one may conclude that when HE says G.D.US, you can believe he means it in a Christian sense, your belief not with standing. You honestly think that MOST of America did NOT separate at that point? Though Barrack's retort was brilliant and delivered a message that we needed to hear, as well as begin dialogs that have long needed venting, it won't swing the bulk of the voting public. But as stated, we will see.
John McCain's opinion is just as valid as the next guy. While true in so far was we may agree, the weighted value is a zero sum game.
And as far as your education, do you want a TV? I've only shot six in my life, and have tossed over the wall a dozen more, but I still have spares, so let me know.

[niboroo]

Obama is a serious and wide-ranging candidate in his vision, honesty, and
in ways he hasn't really developed yet for the public. One good place to check is this month's "American Prospect" with him on the cover. Deals with
his views on foreign policy and related subjects from the point of view that
the whole system dynamic and conformation has to change, not just "how
fast or slow should we get out of Iraq". Good in depth articles. The magazine is probably available at Sawyer's in Santa Rosa, on Fourth Street.

Glad you liked the article. You're welcome. However, I think the amazing groundswell of popular support Obama has enjoyed (and I suppose we should mention all the *small* campaign donations) proves that something more than "East Coast Liberals" (is that a theater group?) and Sonoma County Progressives (a drumming circle?) have given up their votes and their energy to Obama. I think he is proving he's a winner.

And how about that "God damn America?" A man speaking from his heart and his personal experience and Obama not agreeing with him although he no doubt shared some of those experiences. I think it was no less than John McCain who said, famously, "I know Barack Obama, and those are not his views." Are you better qualified to comment?

When we started dropping bombs on an innocent Iraq I might have agreed that America deserved damnation. Of course, I don't believe in damnation in the Christian sense, but otherwise ...



Really? No, I hadn't noticed. But then, I don't educate myself by watching TV.

-Jeff

[Lenny]

Obama is a Mulatto, not a black
follow the link and you'll see a picture of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto
I'm a little disappointed Jeff didn't pick up on that

Well, I recall reading about New Orleans and the style of separation from "octagron" to "nonagron", if I recall correctly, and I don't as has been more than a week. But the mulattoes there would hold beauty contests based on skin color, so there were several entries and several winners, instead of just one. Beauties, all. But that was before race became taboo!
All this on Dr. Martin Luther King's day of mourning!