This is the hardest time for me in the presidential election cycle. One of the democratic candidates wins the primary and then waits a few weeks for party unity to start to take shape. Then he/she rushes to the political center. The week of the 4th of July was when Barack Obama decided to start that process. Last week, he indicated that he would expand Bush’s faith-based initiatives, gave his support to a FISA capitulation compromise that grants retro-active immunity of civil rights violations, and stated his opposition to late-term abortion.

The first move to the center, his desired expansion of federal grants to religious charities isn’t all that bad, if looked at a little more closely. The government has always given money to religious organizations, as long as they meet two criteria: they don’t use the money for programs that proselytize and they don’t discriminate on the bases of religion for receipt of aid and for hiring. The Salvation Army was one such organization. What Bush’s faith-based initiative did was to turn a blind eye to discrimination in hiring by charities and aid groups.

Obama wants a restoration of the anti-discriminatory policy. He said, “First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion” (emphasis mine). Thus Obama simultaneously appears to support faith-based initiatives while actually returning to pre-Bush policies. Furthermore, federal law is actually ambiguous about funding organizations that hire based on religion so Obama’s position is actually a liberal one.

The above image is created and licensed by dbking.

The second move to the center, his support for FISA renewal is also nuanced, but does move him towards the center. At issue is not the FISA bill itself, he’s always supported it’s renewal with limited expansions in power. What he opposes is retroactive immunity for telecoms that illegally violated American Citizens’ civil rights. He’s rejected passing any FISA renewal bill with immunity in the past to the point of supporting a proposed filibuster. Now he’s backtracked to simply working to have the immunity provision removed from the bill. While I am disappointed by the Senator’s softening position, I understand the political need to appear “tough on terrorism”.

The final move to the center involves the abortion issue. In an interview for a Christian magazine (Jesus, now with more gloss and perfume!), Obama said that he wants an exemption to the ban on late-term abortions when the physical health of the mother is in ‘serious’ jeopardy. Just to clarify, that means he doesn’t “think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother.” So if a mother discovers that too late that her fetus has three eyes, one arm, and no brain, she’s forced to give birth to that monstrosity. Under current law, she’d have to even if she’d suffer severe physical damage, so at least his position is an improvement over Bush’s knuckle dragging, women-must-do-what-I-say law. Yet it falls short of restoring a woman’s civil right to make her own choices about her own body. Needless to say, I am severely disappointed by Obama’s position on this issue, which isn’t distinct from McCain’s pre-primary position on the same.

I know it’s normal for presidential candidates to move towards the extremes of their parties for the primaries and then to move towards the center for the general election, what I don’t know is where Senator Obama’s real position is. Did he start out near the center and his new rhetoric reflects his true ideals, or is his primary rhetoric more true to his beliefs? Unfortunately, I suspect the former. This was the main reason I supported Clinton over Obama during the primary. I was uncomfortable with Obama’s religious leanings, fearing his religious beliefs would infect his policy making.

I hope to explore more post-primary shifts in language and policy in future posts for both candidates.