Blackwell: Obama is divisive

The NY Sun published a hit job on Barack Obama today, written by Kenneth Blackwell--the 2006 Ohio gubernatorial candidate who was named in multiple lawsuits following his dual roles in the 2004 election as Ohio secretary state/chief elections officer and honorary co-chair of the state committee to re-elect the president. Bush's win in Ohio made the difference for the president in the electoral college.

Anyway, the thus-credentialed Blackwell says--presumably, w/ a straight face--that he finds Obama's rhetoric on religion divisive and offensive. He cites the senator's recent speech at the UCC gathering--"one of the nation's most liberal Protestant denominations"--in which he accused religious right leaders of "hijacking" and "exploiting" Christianity. Blackwell characterizes conservative evangelical leaders/pastors--he sort of uses the terms interchangeably--as in fact simply acting on their beliefs, i.e., organizing around a narrow set of social issues because God and conscience compel them. The picture he draws is carefully (though subtly) located in the church pulpit, not downtown D.C.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that this is a fair way to characterize the political behavior of churches and pastors. Still, Blackwell is not addressing Obama's real point: the leaders of the religious right movement have long worked quite intentionally--and successfully--to shore up political support among evangelicals via wedge issues, narrow platforms, careful message control, etc. The religious right has never been primarily a grassroots movement. It's ridiculous for Blackwell to defend individual evangelical pastors against charges of "hijacking" and "exploitation," because they're not the ones standing accused--they're the ones who have been exploited, whose faith has been hijacked, by the overtly partisan, top-down efforts of powerful national leaders.

Blackwell's piece is as cynical as it is sneaky. By painting Obama as the Democratic candidate least friendly to evangelicals, he betrays his anxiety about the fact that Obama is the Democratic candidate most friendly to evangelicals. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated the depth of his understanding of the role of faith in public life and in U.S. culture generally; his comments on the subject put Dem. separation boilerplate, and the other candidates, to shame. What's more, he's established that he's no dove when it comes to confronting terror at home and abroad--an important issue to many evangelicals. He's an attractive candidate to moderate evangelicals, an especially scary thing to Blackwell et al. in an election in which the GOP may well nominate a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate, utterly neutralizing the relevance of the culture war in which Blackwell engages with such reckless enthusiasm.