As an atheist, I do not support building any place of worship anywhere in the temporal world. Least of all one of Islamic faith, which, incidentally, has so far not downloaded updates for the 21st century – or the 20th, 19th, 18th or the 17th centuries, for that matter. But do Muslims have a right to build a mosque on private property near Ground Zero?
Unequivocally yes.
Assuming, of course, that such a mosque does not contradict the aesthetics of Lower Manhattan’s architectural landscape.
President Obama, who I suspect is a closet atheist (actually, I suspect any intelligent man is one), couldn’t have been clearer and more rational in his stance. He supports building of the mosque in the principled context of freedom of religion, but does not necessarily approve of the wisdom (if any) to build it at that location.
The irony is that there is nothing bold or radical or controversial about Obama’s position. It is the only position that any president of the United States, as the pre-eminent upholder of the Constitution, can take.
Even former speaker and potential Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich – who vulgarly likened the attempt to build the mosque to erecting a Nazi emblem near a Holocaust memorial – couldn’t but defend building the mosque if he were in the White House. Obviously, the furor over Obama’s position is all politics.
This comes close on the heels of another position that the president has taken, which is actually quite radical in comparison. It concerns Obama dispatching a member of his administration to represent the United States, for the first time, at the annual Hiroshima commemoration Aug. 6. This is the closest that the U.S. has come to hinting at regret for dropping atomic bombs on Japan.
Obama is aware that as the only power to have used nuclear weapons, the U.S. has to demonstrate its remorse, at least tacitly, if its global disarmament objectives are to gain legitimacy in the political context of negotiations with potential proliferators. That such a global concord is probably impossible for at least several generations to come is beside the point.
It is not as though the lately skeptical media and the ever-cynical opposition has given him a pass on this. They did not dwell on that issue because Americans have largely come to accept the immorality of nuclear weapons, even if they are not willing to apologize for their use more than 60 years ago.
Undoubtedly, Obama is at least symbolically trying to address issues that the world expects the U.S. to take on. And he’s fulfilling his campaign promise and popular expectation to change the image of the country for the better. The fact that, according to a Gallup survey, America remains unpopular in much of the Islamic world, only underscores how much more there is to be done, and considering that (notwithstanding) Obama remains very popular in Muslim countries augers well for future efforts.
But the Democrats are not facing elections in Egypt or Morocco. And in places where they are, they have a mighty problem with a cerebral president who insists on presenting rational arguments even for a dumbed-down audience. The mosque issue is going to cost quite a few votes in swing districts, and if it gains more traction, extreme right-wingers are likely to hang it around the president’s middle name, which could have an impact that lasts till 2012.
So, what accounts for the American people not giving Obama the benefit of doubt, never mind due credit, even if most of what he has done and stood for are the very things that a majority expected of him? Even his supporters are beginning to realize that Obama lacks the ability to employ political cunning in governance, almost as much as he lacks a demonstrable empathy. Mark McKinnon, a media strategist, was on the mark in his column in dailybeast.com recently, when he said Obama is precariously close to being trapped in the Johnson predicament. President Lyndon Johnson, who had passed revolutionary legislations, including the Civil Rights Act, never got the credit primarily because he never “sustained an emotional link with the American people.”
Obama, who has signed some historic laws in his tenure, also comes across as an aloof benefactor rather than a father figure who’s doing the right thing. The conservatives are quick to brand him an out-of-touch elitist. The more sensible ones, like The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, blame the youth and inexperience of Obama and his team. Noonan seems to think that the president is surrounded by a technocratic and meritocratic gee-wiz generation, which does not possess the wisdom distilled by age and experience.
If nothing else, that must be the case with the staffers who were responsible for the first lady’s itinerary through the summer. First, she was led to give a speech in the Gulf Coast extolling Americans to holiday on its beaches, and the very next day they dispatch her to a family vacation in Maine! Only people in a bubble would do such things. And who could have OK’d Michelle Obama’s Spanish vacation, at a time when Republicans are hammering away at the hustings about runaway federal spending?
When the political narrative is driven by 24-hour cable news channels and a relentless blogosphere, you cannot reason with public opinion by saying that the first family’s holidays are decided months ahead and last-minute changes play havoc at many levels and that, in any case, the whole idea of a vacation is to get away from it all – particularly vacation spots at home where politics and photo-ops are forever at hand.
Bleak as the situation might seem for the president and his party, the good thing going for them is the opposition. There is no indication that the popular mood has settled with the Republicans – not with Gingrich and Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann scaring the bejesus out of independents. Can Obama pull it off in November?
Yes, maybe he can.
