Obama's moral cowardice

Jacob Weisberg/Newsweek

Obama has had numerous chances to assert leadership on values questions this summer: Arizona’s crude anti-immigrant law, the battle over Prop 8 and gay marriage, and the backlash against what Fox News persists in calling the “Ground Zero mosque.” These battles raise fundamental questions of national identity, liberty, and individual rights. When Lindsey Graham argues for rewriting the Constitution to eliminate the birthright-citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, or Newt Gingrich proposes a Saudi standard for the free exercise of religion, they’re taking positions at odds with America’s basic ideals. But Obama’s instinctive caution has steered him away from casting these questions as moral or civil-rights issues. On none of them has he shown anything resembling courage.
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the current politics don’t favor the liberal position. But read the rug: “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us”—Theodore Roosevelt. Obama has let pass moment after moment—such as the recent Republican suggestion to revise the section of the Constitution that guarantees due process—in which he could have reframed an issue in terms of inclusiveness and justice.

Few would argue that defending liberal principle serves Obama’s short-term interests. Americans oppose the mosque 61 percent to 26 percent, according to one recent poll, and support the Arizona law by an even wider margin. But even if some people don’t like Islam, or illegal immigrants, or gay weddings, they may respond to admonitions that our society is built around freedom of conscience and equal treatment under law. If he applied his oratorical gifts to these principles, Obama could remind a grumbling nation what it liked about him in the first place.

Sadly true. This doesn't mean "give up on this President", however. It means that we need to stand and show the moral courage that we want him to exhibit. It's my belief that he's fallen short in these areas because we've fallen short in these areas. Liberals and progressives worked so hard to elect Obama, and since that point we've largely expected him to govern - in the face of outright distortions, blatant lies, and the worst examples of the politics of hate - by himself while we bicker over how much progress is enough to get us to go back to work for him.

Ultimately, Obama needs to find his moral compass. And so do we.