Obama’s Teflon Wearing Thin -- Part Two of Two

Editor’s note. Please send your thoughts and comments to Daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Last Sunday Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania (site of the next Democratic primary), hosted a “Compassion Forum” aired, to its credit, by CNN. Pro-abortion Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were questioned about “Faith in Public Life.” Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain did not attend, citing a scheduling conflict.

Obama has accrued a reputation as an orator, for reasons of style, not substance. In fact if Obama had a high-pitched voice and a choppy cadence, my guess is people would more likely be polishing their nails than polishing their resumes so they could join the “crusade.”

Newsweek’s Jon Meacham asked Obama, “Senator, do you personally believe that life begins at conception? And if not, when does it begin?”

Obama responded, “This is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on. I think it's very hard to know what that means, when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So I don't presume to know the answer to that question. What I know, as I've said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we're having these debates.”

Got that? Doesn’t know. He then compounds his evasive answer with a meaningless reference to ensoulment. Obama concludes with a throwaway line about “tak[ing] into consideration” the “moral weight” which (like one of those “penumbras” Justice Harry Blackmun conjured up in Roe) presumably emanates from this “potential life.”

This is so gauzy, you could bandage up an entire platoon. But for me, it’s what followed later that is far more significant.

You’ll remember that a while back, Obama tastelessly used his young daughters as rhetorical props in a discussion about unintended pregnancies. Meacham returned to the subject.

“Sir, in an earlier occasion in talking about your own daughters and talking about sex education and contraception, you said that you would not want your daughter punished with a baby if she made a mistake, that you would teach values and morals, but if something were to happen. The phrase punished with a baby was jarring to a number of people. Could you explain what you meant by that?”

“OBAMA: Well, keep in mind, on that same day, I said children are miracles, and so I think it's important not to parse my words too carefully here. What I was saying was that my daughters are 9 and 6. (LAUGHTER) And so if, at the age of 12 or 13, they made what I would consider to be a mistake, in having sex or unprotected sex, and ended up getting pregnant -- I think that statistically we know 12- or 13- year-olds who are having children are much more likely to be impoverished, are much more likely to have health problems, are much more likely to have trouble raising that child.”

Three points worth making.

#1. As I said the first time around, there is something deeply offensive to me, the father of three young women, in the way Obama exploits his young girls. The one thing everyone could admire about the Clintons was the manner in which they jealously guarded Chelsea’s privacy during the run up to the 1992 election and during the two terms Bill Clinton was president. Obama is a different story.

How many dads do you know who would be comfortable saying of their little daughters on national television, “if, at the age of 12 or 13, they made what I would consider to be a mistake, in having sex or unprotected sex, and ended up getting pregnant…”

How many dads do you know who would play hypotheticals about the future sexual activity of their six and nine-year-old daughters for laughs? How many dads do you know who would rather die than talk about their girls so disrespectfully?

#2. Contra Meacham’s request, Obama does not explain what he meant. He is allowed, yet again, to get away with not explicitly saying what is obvious to everyone but his apologists: If either of his girls got pregnant, he’d want them to abort.

#3. Unplanned children as "mistakes" and "punishment"? As an Illinois state Senator Obama represented the impoverished South Side of Chicago where a large proportion of the children were likely born to single mothers. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, “If he were still representing the people of Chicago's Southside, is it likely he'd utter such a foolish, demeaning remark?”

And Obama should know and does know better and should be far more sympathetic. Time magazine carried a story earlier this month, entitled, “The Story of Barack Obama's Mother.” It is hard to imagine a more sympathetic portrait of his late mother or an article that could put Obama in a more favorable light.

Along the way, author Amanda Ripley casually mentioned that Obama’s mother was three months pregnant when she wed Obama’s father. Was Obama a “mistake”?

Often mistaken in what he says? Yes. But a “mistake”? Never.

Part One