First Things on the next president

Excerpts from an interesting First Things sort-of symposium with Nat Hentoff, John DiIulio and Jody Bottum.

Hentoff can't see that protection of the inviolable dignity of human life matters a whole lot to most of these candidates of either party:

From the beginning, so very long ago, of the 2008 presidential campaign, many of the horde of self-proclaimed independent journalists reported that the Democrats were strategically moving toward the center, seeking some sort of common ground even with pro-lifers.

Yet, when the Supreme Court this April upheld a federal ban on partial-birth abortion—once described by the pro-choice Daniel Patrick Moynihan as “minutes from infanticide”—the alarmed Hillary Clinton spoke for nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders when she announced it was “a dramatic departure from four decades of previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.” And, on July 17, she (along with Barack Obama and John Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth) pledged to Planned Parenthood that she would never even consider nominating anyone to the Supreme Court who would not proclaim support for Roe v. Wade.
That reminded me of Ramesh Ponnuru’s description of Democrats as “the party for whom abortion has become a kind of religion.” I would say the same of the great majority of my colleagues in the press. As Susanne Millsaps of NARAL Pro-Choice America once said in tribute: “The media has been our best friend in this fight. They claim objectivity, but I know they’re all pro-choice.”
[snip]
There are many vital issues in this presidential campaign: Iraq, obviously—together with health care, education, and the deadly virus of terrorism. But the omission of the increasing assault on the value of individual human life in this nation leaves legal black holes and silence on the very meaning of life.

Although I am an atheist, I am also a pro-lifer, both with regard to abortion and the quality-of-life issues. Back in 1983, I was impressed with the address that Joseph Cardinal Bernardin gave at Fordham University, in which he coined the phrase “the seamless garment” to speak of the affirmation of life. Many since have preferred to describe it as “a consistent ethic of life,” but Cardinal Bernardin’s original image still stays in my mind: “Nuclear war threatens life on a previously unimaginable scale; abortion takes life daily on a horrendous scale; public executions [continue] in the most advanced technological society in history; and euthanasia is now openly discussed and even advocated. . . . Each of these assaults on life has its own meaning and morality; they cannot be collapsed into one problem, but they must be confronted as pieces of a larger ­pattern.”

I also learned a great deal from another cardinal, one I was privileged to know as a friend: John Cardinal O’Connor. I wish—although I know it is not going to happen—that at least one contender for the presidency would repeat what Cardinal O’Connor asked at the Harvard Law School (not a friendly audience for him but a challenge he enjoyed) in April 1986: “How safe will the retarded be, the handicapped, the aged, the wheel-chaired, the incurably ill when the so-called quality of life becomes the determination of who is to live and who is to die? Who is to determine which life is ‘meaningful,’ which life is not? Who is to have a right to the world’s resources, to food, housing, to medical care? The prospects are frightening.”

DiIulio is sending checks to both Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee:

On questions of poverty and economics, the two best candidates—at least so far in the 2008 presidential campaign—have been Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee. Three questions led me to choose these candidates.

The first was, Best compared to whom? I looked at eight Democrats (Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama, and Richardson) and nine Republicans (Brownback, Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo, and Thompson). I reviewed each candidate’s websites, books, and speeches, plus statements by their respective supporters and critics. I also researched their respective claims regarding relevant legislative or other deeds.

The second question I asked was, Best able to benefit whom? I pictured, for my voter looking for a candidate to support, low-income citizens such as those in my hometown of Philadelphia. More than one in four Philadelphians are below the federal poverty line ($17,170 a year for a three-person family). The city has 110,000 poor children and more than 25,000 children with no health insurance. In 2006, 70 percent of our public school students in eleventh grade scored below proficient in statewide standardized math and reading tests, and the average combined math and reading SAT score hit a new low: 792. In the last half-decade, some five thousand black males, ages fifteen to twenty-nine—one in every thirteen—have been shot or killed on Philly streets. The poorest Philly residents, including elderly shut-ins, live in places where most property is blighted or abandoned.

My third question was, Best as measured by which moral teachings about citizenship and government? Many of the measures I applied are cribbed from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where it is says we have an affirmative duty to serve the common good while prudently promoting both personal responsibility and social justice. We should be neither allergic nor addicted to government. And we should demonstrate due moral regard for minimizing sinful economic inequalities and by preferentially serving the poor.

Jody Bottum, for whom abortion is by far the most important issue, looks to be ready to slit his wrists:

This is a momentous time in American history: a day of great danger, an era of great purpose. And into the weighty moment, the presidential campaign of 2008 has called—um, Ron Paul? John Edwards? Mitt Romney? Hillary Clinton? Let’s be honest and admit what we all know: The weakest set of candidates in living memory has taken the field, and we still have more than a year left of watching these people, lumbering and blumbering toward the goal line.

Even a hard-bitten soul shivers at the thought of describing them all.

But then he goes on to, in delectably vicious prose, if you like that sort of thing (and I do). And then:

Obviously, if the Democrats do manage to win the presidency, the pro-life movement loses. But if the Republicans win—well, unfortunately, it looks as though the pro-life movement still loses. I see no likely way for those who care about abortion to emerge from this campaign in anything but a weaker position in the fight against Roe v. Wade. You’d think the GOP would see a lesson in all this: When abortion was somewhere near the focus of national politics in 2000, the Republicans did well. When the issue of abortion receded in the political arena in 2006, the Democrats returned.
[snip]
A Fred Thompson nomination, a slim election victory over Hillary Clinton, a stealth pro-lifer slipped on the Supreme Court through a Democratic Senate—that weak scenario is about the best a social conservative can hope for today. Everything else is bad. Very bad.