By Dave Andrusko

Part Two talks about a big victory in Ireland. Part Three offers you the chance to purchase copies of National Right to Life News' January 22 Commemorative Edition. Please send your comments on any part to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

"Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds. No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. … A year into his presidency, however, Obama's gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum."
     -- From "7 stories Obama doesn't like," by John Harris, which appeared in Politico.com November 30.

"Abortion rights activists were lobbying lawmakers Wednesday in an effort to torpedo tougher restrictions on abortion coverage in the health care legislation that is being debated in the Senate. … Wednesday's rally is being held by the Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak."
     -- Fox News, December 2.
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Whether the subject is pro-abortion President Barack Obama floundering in the polls or a slew of pro-abortion lobbyists trying to "persuade" the Senate to do what the leadership already is determined to do, the common denominator is the crucial significance of shaping how the public understands you and your agenda. In one instance as the scales begin to fall from the public's eyes Obama is losing his ability to mesmerize Americans. In the other instance pro-abortionists are seeking to turn truth on its head by convincing the public that it is pro-lifers, not pro-abortionists, who are gearing up to change the rules of the game that have governed abortion financing for decades.

The usual suspects--PPFA and Alliance for Justice, for example--are being joined in town today by groups you would expect (MoveOn.org), as well as others that most people would find surprising, such as the YWCA!

Pro-Abortion President Barack Obama

They want to make sure the Senate health care restructuring bill does not include the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which the House adopted, and which genuinely extends the principles of the Hyde Amendment that governs all of the current federal health programs. Of course, they are also no doubt loudly insisting that the final bill that comes out of any House-Senate conference committee is shorn of Stupak-Pitts as well.

For single-issue pro-lifers the piece by John Harris that ran a few days ago in Politico makes for fascinating reading, although it is important to us for reasons different than it might be for many others. (See www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29993.html)

Harris's primary point is that the seven story lines "all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president's actions and motives." Without getting off into a lengthy discussion, they are an interesting amalgam of vanity, weakness, aloofness, and lack of fiscal discipline. But what does mean for what we are trying to accomplish?

Obama poses a lethal threat to unborn children not just because--or not even primarily because--support for abortion on demand is the prism through which he evaluates the unborn child's right to life. In one sense he is the usual-usual pro-abortion Democrat (albeit made worse by a cavalier disregard for babies born prematurely). But in another sense Obama is far more dangerous because he has seduced millions of people into subscribing to his story that he is going to "end the culture wars."

If the public buys into this, they are more likely to accept patently insincere assurances that he is like Horatio at the gate--that (as he told ABC News' Jake Tapper) "I want to make sure...that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions…" (Every time I watch that interview I think of the pickpocket whose real gift is distracting your attention which makes actually lifting your wallet child's play.)

So, for us, the overriding "storyline" is not that Obama acts as if he is playing with Monopoly money or that he has way more than his share of "self-regard." It's whether "as the novelty of a new president wears off," the "cult of personality" that has grown up around Obama runs aground.

If it does, we can hope that the average American will no longer be lulled into thinking Obama is anything other than a pro-abortion Democrat, one who told Planned Parenthood public policy arm in 2007 that "in my mind, reproductive care is essential care, basic care, so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose."

Part Two
Part Three