Responding to a Couple of Articles

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/14/ive_said_a_few_times/

Stephen Waldman goes to work to dispel a strange heresy, I think, in his book. The Founding Fathers did not agree on the substance of every issue and proposal, including something like the role of government in religion.

James Madison, America's most underrated intellectual, believed that state-sponsored religions resulted in religious laziness from the people and persecution of minority religions. He set out to ensure that the government did not promote a state religion. Not everyone agreed with him, or with Jefferson's "wall of separation," for that matter. The first amendment is fairly nuanced and complex as is.

As it is, I see this statement as a triumph:

Compared to our past, and to most other countries, we have relatively little religious conflict and have seen one barrier after another fall. Religious "sects" once persecuted as false and heretical – Quaker, Catholic, Unitarian, Jehovah's Witness and Southern Baptist -- later sent men to the White House. At various points in recent years, we've had five Catholic Supreme Court Justices; five Jewish Cabinet secretaries, and five Mormon U.S. Senators, and stunningly little controversy resulted. We've witnessed a Ramadan dinner at the White House; a Hindu priest opening a session of the House of Representatives; and a Buddhist sworn in as Navy Chaplain.

This is what I would call a victory for "dispositional conservatism." Religious tolerance grew organically and naturally out of societal structures and values, rather than out of government coercion. The Founders created a somewhat-ambiguous system that lent itself to this sort of change.

I thought this was a good article and a nice summation of a very controversial topic. People often denigrate originalism, but looking to the history is a good way to see what the debates were then and to see how they apply to now. After all, if we're not happy with something, we can always change it through the system, rather than by circumventing the system or by misappropriating language and purposes.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/playing_by_obamas_rules.html

Geraldine Ferraro has hurt herself far more than anyone else, almost as if she were taking a bullet for Clinton so that Clinton can continue to fight. At this point, there is simply no way to win the black vote for Clinton. Her only hope, from a very pessimistic racial perspective, is to win more of the white vote. Having people like Ferraro throw fire out there is tactically sound.

For a fire-breathing reactionary populist, Pat Buchanan is a great writer. His point here is worth considering:

John F. Kennedy would not have gotten 78 percent of the Catholic vote had he not been Catholic. Hillary would not have rolled up those margins among white women in New Hampshire had she not been a sister in trouble. Mitt Romney would not have swept Utah and flamed out in Dixie were he not a Mormon. Mike Huckabee would not have marched triumphantly through the Bible Belt were he not a Baptist preacher and evangelical Christian. All politics is tribal. The first campaign this writer ever covered was the New York mayoral race of 1961. Republicans stitched together the legendary ticket of Lefkowitz, Fino and Gilhooley, to touch three ethnic bases. Folks laughed. No one would have professed moral outrage had anyone suggested they were appealing to, or even pandering to, the Jewish, Italian and Irish voters of New York. People were more honest then.

It's an interesting point. For good reasons, we have become more sensitive to concerns about race. But here, I think, we take discretion too far, to the point where some people even avoided talking about Romney's wins in Nevada and Utah from a religious perspective. Romney had the support of 95% of Mormons in Nevada, who constituted over a quarter of the caucusers. How can you argue that he didn't benefit from his Mormonism in those states?

At the same time, being a member of a "tribe" sometimes hurts. Romney may very well have won Iowa if he were an ardent Protestant rather than a Mormon. His loss in Iowa, in retrospect, torpedoed his campaign. Can we make a similar argument about Obama?

Let's be clear on this. Obama is not winning the nomination because he is black. He's winning the nomination because he has run a fantastic campaign; it would have been very, very easy for things to go wrong at roughly 236 stages of the campaign, in addition at many points in his life before this. Looking at the way it has shaken out, though, and looking at Obama's voters, it's just impossible to ignore Obama's race in trying to grasp his enormous success at this point in his life.

The popular idea that "Obama would have won the nomination already if he were white" is a silly proposition, I think. Why?

1. Obama has formulated part of his campaign upon moving past racial lines. For sensible reasons, such an argument resonates a bit less for a white candidate than a black candidate.

2. Buchanan argues that Obama would not have gotten the keynote address at the 2004 DNC if he were white. This is an uncomfortable topic to discuss, but I think it's probably true. I went to the archives to check this claim out.

DNC Keynote Speakers

1976: Rep. Barbara Jordan (TX)
1980: Not sure. The 1980 Dem convention was a mess.
1984: Gov. Mario Cuomo (NY)
1988: St. Treasurer Ann Richards (TX)
1992: Rep. Barbara Jordan (TX)
1996: Gov. Evan Bayh (IN)
2000: Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (TN)
2004: St. Sen. Barack Obama (IL)

Cuomo and Bayh were white governors. The other four speakers were members of Democratic Party protected groups. None were as inexperienced as Barack Obama.

Obama's speech was electrifying and brilliant. But would he have gotten to make that speech otherwise?

I accept Buchanan's claim here.

3. Bill Clinton, often called the "first black president," was extremely popular among African-Americans. Hillary Clinton would have latched onto this group, along with women and her labor constituency, making her largely unbeatable. Jay Cost wrote about the Mondale coalition for Clinton back in New Hampshire. Obama would more likely be Mondale's Gary Hart than the nominee, I think. Now, Hart had a VERY good chance to win in 1988 and was only derailed by an affair. That's probably where Obama would be characterized. Clinton would have won the nomination. Obama might have gotten the VP slot, or he might not have. Either way, Obama would be the clear frontrunner for the next cycle.

The Obama coalition is, to a man, strange. He is attracting African-Americans in droves, along with well-off "Starbucks Democrats." It is a weird coalition that does not make sense on economic terms.

Race is a difficult topic to navigate, and indeed, Obama has overcome obstacles that I cannot even fathom to get to this point. But to simply ignore the evidence, to me, is a greater sin than being controversial. And I can't make a case that he would have derailed the Clinton machine without the overwhelming support of African-Americans, or that he would have emerged as a viable presidential candidate before the age of 45 without that keynote address.