The Rick Warren Controversy: Did Obama Get It Wrong? Bloggers Respond

by Damozel | Obama wasn't my first choice for a Democratic candidate and this might be why I am less judgmental toward him now than many progressives who supported his "Change" brand without checking the specs or reading the list of ingredients on the label.  He's determined to bridge that Great Divide. Hey, it worked for Bill Clinton, didn't it?  Oh, it didn't?  Okay, but Obama is going to do it differently, right?  Things are different now, with the right having thoroughly shamed and discredited itself after getting its way for eight years running.  On good days I almost believe this.

But Rick Warren giving the invocation at the inauguration feels like a bridge too far for most of us. Understandably, it's raised a lot of hackles along progressive spines. Bill Kavanaugh sums up the reasons here.

Goaded into commenting while on vacation, Joan Walsh---who hardly represents what I'd call the "far left"---also addresses the reasons behind the raised hackles:

I'm all for Obama (and Republicans, for that matter) reaching out to the other side. I am not theoretically opposed to Obama choosing an antiabortion gay-rights critic; I'm opposed to Warren himself. He's a poster boy for kinder, gentler 21st century bigotry, and Obama shouldn't validate him with this lofty symbolic role....

I believe in seeking common ground, and I was curious to see what Warren – and Obama – were up to. I watched carefully when Obama went to Saddleback for a presidential forum in August, along with John McCain.

As I wrote at the time, I think Obama got punked; Warren spent an inordinate amount of time at the forum on issues like abortion and gay rights, and the promised focus on poverty reduction and social justice got short shrift. At Saddleback services the next day, Mike Madden didn't find one worshiper planning to vote for Obama. One day after that, a self-satisfied Warren told Beliefnet he couldn't say for sure whether Obama could compete for the evangelical vote, but he insisted that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier.  (Salon)

I remember that, and I remember my own bemusement and dismay that Obama would let himself in it.  I found the whole show an exercise in vicarious humiliation.  I can't imagine why Obama feels he has to "reach out" now to the very person who humiliated him and all progressive christians (of which I am one). 

I cling to the faint hope that he's planning to retaliate by later taking powerful stances on gay rights and the abortion issues that Warren will never afterward be able to live down and that will forever neutralize his influence....But no.  That would be wrong.

Anyway, there's more.  Walsh continues:

Beyond his noxious political views -- Warren has compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality, supports the Iraq war, and, in fact, just gave George W. Bush his first-ever "international medal of peace" (yes, peace) -- I have come to distrust Warren personally. He looks to be from a long line of religious leaders more concerned about their own glory than the glory of God....

I object to the full Warren package, I think he's a force for division, not inclusion, and a terrible symbol for this inspiring new administration. And once again, I see an arrogance and/or naiveté on the part of Obama, when he defends his choice of Warren -- and it was his choice; read Madden's fine story -- as showing "we can disagree and not be disagreeable." I'd tell that to Rick Warren, not his critics.

Mike Madden, who has watched their relationship evolve, comments as follows:

Obama and Warren have often used each other to demonstrate that they'll be willing to listen to people they disagree with -- and yes, also to let everyone know that they'll be willing to anger their friends....

Obama hasn't even taken office yet, and it's already clear that he doesn't hold grudges (file Warren, Rick, somewhere behind Lieberman, Joe, on the list of people Obama has refused to seek revenge against for campaign-related slights). He's also determined to carry his post-partisan rhetoric from the trail all the way into the White House, and he seems to believe he can lead the country to a new united, consensus-driven politics. But first, he may need to find a way to convince everyone else on his side that that approach is the right one.

One theory is that Obama is essentially saying to Dems, including gay ones:  "Come on.  You know I love you.  I'm just trying to give a little love, Jesus-style, to the people outside our big tent so won't throw rocks and ruin everything when we do the right thing later on."

If so, should we praise his strategy of smoothing over divisiveness?  Will  reaching out to opponents and friendly persuasion create lasting change (i.e., change that won't create a backlash and get overturned with the next conservative administration)?

Glenn Greenwald, here, would have you consider the history of Democratic accommodation and its political outcome:

[T]here is one aspect of the worldview of many Obama supporters that I find genuinely difficult to understand.  These supporters insist that by symbolically including and sometimes compromising with even those on the Right with whom he vigorously disagrees, Obama will be able to chip away at the partisan hostilities and resentments, and erode the cultural divisions, that have inflamed and paralyzed our politics.  People on the Right may disagree with him, claim these supporters, but they won't be wallowing in rage, suspicions, and hatred towards him.  Instead, they'll feel respected and accommodated.  They therefore won't be distracted by petty sideshow controversies.  As a result, he'll encounter less reflexive resistance to implementing the key parts of his progressive agenda.   A New Politics will emerge:  one of respectful and civil disagreements, but not consumed by crippling partisan and cultural hatreds.

[I]n what conceivable sense is this approach "new"?  Even for those who are convinced this will work, isn't this exactly the same thing Democrats have been doing for the last two decades:  namely, accommodating and compromising with the Right in the name of bipartisan harmony and a desire to avoid partisan and cultural conflicts?  This harmonious approach may be many things, but the one thing it seems not to be is "new."In fact, wasn't this transpartisan mentality exactly the strategic premise that drove the Bill Clinton presidency, exactly what Dick Morris' triangulation tactics were designed to achieve?....

What did all of those post-partisan, cultural outreach efforts generate?  Hatred so undiluted that it led to endless investigations, accusations whose ugliness was boundless, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and ultimate impeachment over a sex scandal.  Bill Clinton was anything but a cultural or partisan warrior.  He was the opposite.  And that was what he had to show for it.

Then there were the Democrats of the Bush era.  From 9/11 onward, they were probably the single most cooperative, compliant, and accommodating "opposition party" ever to exist.  There wasn't a partisan or ideological bone in their body.  To the contrary, they were compromise and accommodation finding its purest and most submissive expression.  Their eagerness to accommodate was so severe that, at the end of 2007, it actually led The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin to observe:  "Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed."

It's like the Obama people have never noticed how really adroit the far right is at praising Democrats for doing what they want without ever giving any credit to them for doing it.  

Also looking to the past, Ambinder writes:

One reason the Rick Warren thing is a big deal to gay rights activists is because, after their experience with President Bill Clinton, the gay  community is unusually sensitive to getting the shorter angle of presidential triangulation. ...

It is hard to overstate the optimism and excitement that gays and lesbians felt in 1992. But the optimism deflated spectacularly after "Don't Ask, Don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act,  not to mention Clinton's sneaky 1996 ad boasting about DOMA, which aired only on Christian radio.

But that was then, and we're 16 years further along.  Has anything changed?  John Cole, looking at the present and at the middle path, points out:

I seriously doubt there has ever been anyone giving the invocation that openly supported gay marriage or gay rights. On the other hand, an open advocate for gay marriage is giving the Benediction, and that has never happened before.

This is not a slap in the face to gays, and...this is not Obama telling homosexuals they are unwelcome. This is what progress looks like- the last Democratic President signed DOMA and passed DADT. Again, I completely understand why some may be upset at the selection of Warren to give a one minute speech, but it just looks like this is not a big deal to me. What Obama has done in elected office in the past and what he does after the inauguration are the things we should focus on, not a small nod to the evangelical right in the spirit of inclusiveness.  (emphasis added)

Though Cole also supports his case by reference to history---that is to say,  Obama's previous history (including legislation he's supported and his public statements) on gay rights.

It's the holidays, and I want to feel excited about the end of the Bush years, so I have decided to go with what I'll call the "Cole position" on the Warren selection. 

As Greenwald says, time will tell.

Ultimately, the reason politics is unavoidably "divisive" is because people have really divergent and irreconcilable views on passion-provoking controversies.  That's what politics is.  It's what it always has been.  At some point, Obama either will or won't repeal DOMA and don't-ask-don't-tell; he either will or won't rescind Bush's anti-abortion regulations and appoint new Supreme Court Justices likely to re-affirm Roe; he either will or won't close Gitmo; he either will or won't withdraw from Iraq; he either will or won't investigate Bush war crimes; he either will or won't deliver on his promises to unions, etc.  People feel very strongly -- and very differently -- about those issues. 

Someone is going to be angered and feel alienated by what decision he makes, by the outcome, and symbolic paeans to inclusion are unlikely to soothe that....Because of the very nature of politics -- to say nothing of the nature of the contemporary American Right -- politics is highly unlikely to exist without angry, often ugly, conflicts of that sort.

I trust that Obama will take as firm a stand when the time comes to make the right calls as he has on the question of his selection of Warren.

And on this score, The Editors at The Toot take a grimly pragmatic view of the value of symbolistry:

[G]ive it a month.  Barack Obama will then sit down with, and promote at state events, a parade of very non-metaphorical racists, anti-Semites, murders, tyrants, torturers, and worse, many of whom are our very great friends.  He will do it for these essentially the same reason that he has, and will again, court Rick Warren - because they are players in the international sphere much as I gather Mr. Warren is in the domestic. And so they will be offered these symbolic concessions in the hope that they are stupid enough to trade them for material concessions.  And it often works: you’d be surprised how many people expect politics to validate their identity, and for whom the ultimate prize is to win meaningless symbolic triumphs over their rivals.  It’s called “politics”, the business of negotiating the world of humans, most of whom are scorching assholes and insecure idiots.  There are ways of avoiding this unpleasantness, but they all involve not being a politician.  The Game is the Game.

Is this smart politics?  Will courting Warren indeed weaken the Republican stranglehold on white evangelicals? I don’t know, and neither do you.  Warren is being given a symbolic victory in exchange for the possibility of material political gain for a liberal agenda.  That’s a trade you take every single time.

Memeorandum has more here.

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