Obama tries spin moves to dodge Notre Dame tacklers
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
May 18, 2009
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| President Barack Obama receives an Honorary Doctorate Degree during commencement at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., on Sunday. (AP photo) |
A politician as good as Barack Obama knows his opponent’s argument better than he knows his own.
But while Obama may have enough rhetorical command of conservatism to build straw men or to ingratiate himself to a hostile audience, he still does not understand what really animates the Right.
Obama tried to dodge the resurgent issue of abortion in his commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday, explaining that people who disagree can still work together.
Obama pointed to the favored Democratic common ground of reducing the number of abortions while retaining unlimited access to the procedure.
To make his point, and to show respect for his hosts, Obama invoked the negotiations of the six original members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957, including Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Ted Hesburgh.
Obama said that though the six were of different backgrounds and divergent opinions, they bonded over a mutual love for fishing and managed to find common ground on how to put Brown v. Board of Education into practice.
A good story, but not particularly relevant.
Ike’s six fisherman were looking for a politically palatable way to deal with the irresistible demand for black equality, not debating whether blacks were equal to whites.
On abortion, the issue isn’t whether people want more adoptions or birth control devices to be distributed in schools. The issue is whether abortion ends a human life.
That can’t be worked out on a fishing trip.
Suggesting that by reasoning together Americans can find a compromise on abortion shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the matter. Either that, or Obama is just being facile in an effort to dodge the most divisive issue of the past 35 years.
One could understand why Obama would want to sidestep the matter.
In a country where more than half of people now say they are “pro-life,” Obama finds himself pretty far out of the mainstream when it comes to abortion.
He voted against a bill specifying that it is murder to kill babies born after unsuccessful late-term abortions. Even though just such an incident occurred in his own district while he was in the Illinois Senate, Obama opposed the bill because it might later be used to try to defeat Roe v. Wade.
On Sunday, the plaintiff in the Texas case that would become Roe v. Wade was arrested outside Obama’s speech in South Bend, Ind.
Norma McCorvey had a change of heart after her successful quest for a legal abortion changed the nation. Like dozens of other protesters, McCorvey implored Obama to change his mind and recognize the human rights of unborn children.
In light of the changing political landscape, Obama has moderated his talking points since his days in the Illinois Senate, but the president remains a staunch supporter of abortion. And when he announces his Supreme Court pick in the days to come, that will be made abundantly clear.
So perhaps Obama was being facile and trying to gloss over an incendiary issue in order to lessen his own political exposure.
But something else Obama told the students in South Bend suggests that maybe he really doesn’t understand the depth of the divides that keep people apart.
Speaking of his wish for all of mankind to create “one human family,” Obama said:
“For the major threats we face in the 21st century — whether it’s global recession or violent extremism, the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease — do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.”
Nonsense.
“Violent extremism” is the politically correct term for Islamist terrorism, and those blokes are very discriminating indeed.
When they were culling the Jews out of the Mumbai hotels for slaughter, they certainly seemed to be targeting specific ethnic groups.
When they hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, it wasn’t a toss-up between here and Ottawa, so we know they recognize borders too.
The nuclear weapons don’t multiply down in their silos like Gremlins fed after dark. The spread Obama was lamenting is the handiwork of bad men in bad regimes who wish to do America harm.
Terrorists toting dirty bombs are not the same as swine flu, and if Obama doesn’t understand that, maybe he does believe abortion can be worked out on a fishing trip.
