Maybe it was inevitable that, once the Obama campaign had been caught in one verbal inexactitude (“NAFTAquiddick”), other instances would sprout like weeds. Jeffrey Lord presents another. His article is over-long and overwrought, so let me boil it down to the interesting facts.
On June 23, 2007, Senator Obama delivered an address to the annual meeting of the General Synod of the United Church of Christ. The church’s Web site announced the event thus:
Obama’s Synod speech will be his “first major address on faith and politics as presidential candidate.”
Joshua DuBois, the Obama campaign’s director of religious affairs, said the senator’s Synod speech on Saturday will be his first major address on faith and politics as a presidential candidate. The address, DuBois said, will combine personal details about Obama’s religious experiences with prescriptions for how religious Americans might put their faith into action.
The speech itself included passages like this one:
It’s been several months now since I announced I was running for president. In that time, I’ve had the chance to talk with Americans all across this country. And I’ve found that no matter where I am, or who I’m talking to, there’s a common theme that emerges. It’s that folks are hungry for change – they’re hungry for something new. They’re ready to turn the page on the old politics and the old policies – whether it’s the war in Iraq or the health care crisis we’re in, or a school system that’s leaving too many kids behind despite the slogans.
And this:
I have made a solemn pledge that I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500 a year.
Nothing remarkable there. He’s doubtless uttered the same words from hundreds of stumps. Nor was it remarkable that Obama campaign workers manned tables at the entrance to the convention center where he was speaking. Unfortunately, the IRS became interested in whether the UCC, by hosting a campaign event by a Presidential candidate, had violated the conditions for its tax-exempt status.
It will be a surprise if the UCC suffers any adverse consequences beyond a stern admonition, though its legal fees have apparently been painfully large. What is not, alas, a surprise is how the Obama campaign responded – by denying the obvious:
Amy Brundage, an Obama spokeswoman, insisted that the speech was not a campaign event. In the address, Obama spoke about his personal spiritual journey and had said that faith had been misused in the past to divide Americans, partly because of the Christian right.
A nationalized health care bill is part of a “personal spiritual journey”?
The moment was, of course, embarrassing for the campaign, since it and the UCC had been trapped by absurd rules that try to purify churches from all political activity (and are most often used against “conservative” denominations). But the best reaction to embarrassment is honesty, or at least silence, not Clintonian discourse.
Comments