Say it loud

Ross (and Caleb) draw attention to a little-known part of the Barack Obama picture: his church's adherence to a black self-help doctrine, one that is compatible with the localism and particularism espoused by traditionalist conservatives.

I dunno, this 2008 election is going to be interesting for me as a social conservative. I've got no natural candidate to support -- unless Huckabee and/or Brownback get all Smoove B on me -- and I would by no means rule out voting for Giuliani. Like Ross says, social and religious conservatives are a lot more complicated than our opponents give us credit for. Giuliani (and for that matter, Obama) is far from my ideal on the issues. But with Giuliani, he's tough and innovative, and he's absolute right on law and order issues. I think Bush was the last hurrah for the social right regarding substantially changing abortion policy at the federal level, and for passing a constitutional amendment to prevent SCOTUS from declaring gay marriage. And frankly, I am incapable of believing the pandering of Republican politicians to my side on these issues. The war and its aftermath is more acutely important right now, and Giuliani has not been on the right side here. Still, I would trust him infinitely more than I would trust Hillary Clinton.

When I say "the war and its aftermath," I'm talking in general about the war on Islamist terror. I am one of those religious conservatives who does believe that this is a civilizational war, and that we're going to be fighting it for the rest of my life, at least. And that we haven't been fighting it well under Bush. There is no national politician I trust more to understand what is at stake here than Rudy Giuliani, and not to go soft. What I want to know, though, is if he learned the lesson of our failure with the Iraq adventure. Because I don't care how much of a harda*s he is, if he's going to bring us more of that Bush-style messianic Wilsonianism, we cannot afford to have him in office.

As for Obama, I really like him. A lot. It's hard to see myself voting for someone who holds such doctrinaire liberal positions, but if he can move this country past the same old stalemated and stale battles over race and poverty, what a gift to America that would be. The thing about Obama, I find, is that I want him to succeed. Every time I hear him or see him, I'm rooting for him. I want the left to produce politicians like him. And I definitely want to know more about his localist/particularlist vision, if he really has one. Again, at this point it's hard to imagine myself voting for him -- but not impossible.

UPDATE: See, this is why I'm interested in Obama, and what he has to say. Via Andrew Sullivan comes this link to a speech Obama gave last year about religion and its role in American life. In the end, of course, Obama, like all politicians, should be judged not by what he says, but by what he does. But it's a great thing to hear a Democrat talk like this, and to admit that his mind was changed by a religious conservative. Here's an excerpt in which he talks about a letter he got from a doctor who explained why he probably couldn't vote for him:

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be "totalizing." His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of the Republican agenda.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website, which suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor went on to write:

"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice...and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason...Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded....You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others...I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own - a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

Like I said, even if I couldn't, in the end, bring myself to vote for Obama, I'm glad he's around. Both parties need more like him.