“To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your President too.”
Thus you spoke in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday night. You may hear our voices, but you don’t need our help.
President-elect Obama, you will have all the help you want with the biggest Democratic majority in Congress since the 1970s. Your party now has the ability to do pretty much what it likes. You can nod patiently while we Republicans and conservatives make our piteous protestations, and then you can flick us away.
But if – if! – you are serious that you want to “heal the divides” there are things you can do. Most importantly, there are things you can decide not to do. And oh, what a difference your restraint would make to 56 million of us who did not choose you to lead!
• Don’t withdraw our troops from Iraq – not yet, not according to any timetable that our enemies could read. We are so close to victory, so close to leaving a once-tyrannized and brutalized people with a functioning government and the hope of a reasonably peaceful future. In 1975, when America was fighting another unpopular war, Congressional Democrats sealed South Vietnam’s fate by cutting off funding to our ally. The United States left Saigon covered in shame, having abandoned the South Vietnamese to the horrific depredations of the communist North. Please, Mr. Obama, don’t acquiesce in the same betrayal of the people of Iraq. Let us leave when they are reasonably secure, when al Qaeda in Iraq is vanquished. Let our troops leave wreathed in the honor they have won.
• Don’t, for the love of God, sign the “Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)” when the Democratic Congress brings it to your desk. If enacted, this innocuous-sounding document would instantly wipe out the modest, hard-won gains made by pro-life Americans – gains made democratically, by the will of the people. Parents in 44 states have the right to be told if their young daughters seek abortions – FOCA would take that notification away. Health care workers in 27 states have the right not to participate in what they believe is the morally repugnant act of abortion – FOCA would take that right away. Restrictions on late-term abortions – the deliberate killing of viable unborn babies – would vanish. That’s not freedom; it’s barbarism.
• Don’t let researchers loose on human embryos. “Saving lives and reducing human suffering,” as the Democratic platform urges, can’t be countenanced at the price of harvesting the defenseless bodies, however tiny, of other human beings. The world is hailing you as the first African-American President in large part because your victory seems an act of expiation for our national sin of slavery. Slavers used the unwilling bodies of others as a kind of raw material; do not be party to the same voracity practiced upon the unborn. Adult stem cell research is yielding as much promise as that performed on embryos. Surely you can support directing scientific enquiries in a way that is consistent with the moral truths dear to so many of your countrymen.
Mr. Obama, in your speech on Tuesday night, you spoke of the need for “a new spirit of sacrifice.” As our next President, you have the opportunity to take the lead on this. Let the sacrifice begin with you.
If you really want to win the esteem of red America, you will need to give up some of what you have promised to blue America.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
