By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  They are much appreciated.

There were two dead-mortal certainties the day after the day after pro-abortion President Barack Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame and received a honorary doctor of laws degree.

On the one hand, the national press--having taking its adulation for our rock-star President to new heights on Monday--would find still other ways to show that Obama is, at a minimum, Lincolnesque on Tuesday. My favorite was actually from a Harvard Business School professor who intoned, "Obama's eloquent Notre Dame speech could have Gettysburg Address-like historical reverberations." Ponder that one for a moment.

And on the other hand (on a much smaller scale, of course), it was certain that a lot of pro-lifers would write to express their thanks for telling the truth about our 44th President. It's a privilege to have this forum, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your words of encouragement.

In much of the commentary celebrating Obama, there was a hard-to-miss air of triumphalism. It reminded me of the infamous words of the terminally smug pro-abortion Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, "We won. We run things now."

And that's fine. What's the point of snookering the nation and basking in the glow of a compliant media if they can't gloat?

With respect to the Notre Dame appearance, there are several threads that run through much of the commentary. First and foremost, as we're told by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, "Obama's opponents seek to reignite the culture wars. He doesn't."

This is so typical--and so spectacularly wrong-headed--I'd like to focus just on that.

This is the basic matrix established early on by Obama and his followers in the media. If Obama really is just a radical centrist, determined to reach out to even his most ignorant foes (read us), then to challenge him only proves their point. Only those determined to "reignite the culture wars" can possibly miss that this man not only wants to turn the rhetorical thermostat down, he is also modest to a fault, kind to little old ladies, and truly an Eagle Scout at heart.

How in the world can someone possibly come to that conclusion, at least with respect to abortion? Simple. They are talking about Obama's soaring rhetoric. If they can convince you (and themselves!) to look up toward the clouds, you'll never notice the grim, anti-life details of his policy proposals on the ground.

You know Obama's pro-abortion scorecard, so I won't rehash it here. But what happen when he does say something that is a real clunker--when Obama accidentally gives a hint of just how genuinely pro-abortion he is? His defenders insist we deliberately misread him. A perfect example is his administration's assault on the conscience rights of pro-life doctors.

Then, as he did at Notre Dame, when Obama says he was only kidding--that he would "honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion--"scribes such as Dionne give him double bonus points. He is "tr[ying] to undo mistakes made early in his administration." What a guy!

Up until that moment, of course, we never even know his supporters considered it a "mistake."

A blogger at Time magazine yesterday observed, "But rather than defend his position on the issue [of abortion] or even explain it, Obama talked about how to talk about it." In his wisdom and moderation Obama was suggesting that we should agree to disagree but (to quote from the speech) "without reducing those with differing views to caricature."

I agree. Caricature suggests you take some small and not necessarily representative sample and blow it up like a hot-air balloon.

But that is not what pro-life critics of Obama do. We cite chapter and verse what he has done already (e.g. deep-sixing Mexico City); what he has steadfastly insisted he will do; and what he is already inkling he will do.

With that evidence in hand, they reach the only conclusion anyone whose head is not in the clouds could come to: this is PPFA's heartthrob.

Dionne concludes that Obama (and University of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins) were so good the crowd should have carried them off the podium on their shoulders. While critics were "harsh" and filled with "rage," Obama/Jenkins were Jesus-like in their generosity and meekness. (Dionne notes that Sunday's scriptural readings at Catholic Masses was Jesus' command to his disciples to "Love one another.")

That is why, according to Dionne, "Obama's opponents on the Catholic right placed a large bet on his Notre Dame visit. And they lost."

I can't speak for the "Catholic right," but what I can say is that whatever short-term gains there undoubtedly were for Obama, long-term the only way pro-lifers could have lost would have been had they remained mute at the travesty of the most pro-abortion President in our history being honored by the best known Catholic University in our country.

For now the winds remain at Obama's back. But they won't always.