The Christian Wrong

    Among the aftershocks of the presidential election are fulminations from the Christian right. Leaders there say they won't abandon efforts to have the government of the United States enforce their religious doctrine.
    The Roman Catholic Church weighed in through the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano,  and Vatican radio.  The church re-asserted its opposition to initiatives legalizing same-sex marriage.  A front-page newspaper article said, "The church is called upon to present itself as the lone critic of modernity, the only check ... to the breakup of anthropological structures  on which human society was founded."    In a radio editorial, a Vatican spokesman asked sarcastically why gay marriage proponents don't go ahead and push for legal recognition of polygamy as well. 
   The Protestant right also is sobered by losses on gay marriage and abortion issues.  Leaders there -- sounding more like political consultants than churchmen -- say they must find ways to broaden their base.
    Teachers in my day would have cited the Vatican's radio gibe as an example of the straw man technique.  With it, a speaker attacks a caricature of an adversary's stated view rather than dealing forthrightly with what the adversary really said.  This tactic can be found in texts on debating -- also in studies of propaganda.
    The marriage  question being posed in America today has nothing to do with polygamy or, for that matter, with permitting human beings to marry saltshakers or shoehorns.  The question being posed is quite simple, and eminently fair: Should all American citizens living in long-term, monogamous commitments have equal rights under civil law?
    The eagerness of religious leaders for political clout is a threat to the integrity of democratic government, of course.  It also is a threat to the integrity of free religious practice in this country.  Once the door between religion and government is opened, it can be used by all comers,  and we cannot foresee what tomorrow's energized faction will be.
    This yen for secular power -- emphasis on both words -- also would appear to be fundamentally inconsistent with the original Christian message.  It warned religious leaders of that day against savoring earthly status, and against putting words in the mouth of the deity.  It warned that faith is not manifest in rule-mongering,  that the faithful life cannot be defined by a human hirearchy's authorized list of do's and don'ts.
   The Roman Catholic Church has amply demonstrated blindness to the difference between nourishing values and protecting its institutional grip.  Conservative American Protestants have entered similar territory with leaders who invite the courtship of politicians, and with interest groups that are only lobbies in fancy dress.
    Although the true believers of the right have not been able to take over federal policy, they have tainted our politics. Their influence has placed the Republican Party in disarray. And they've given us a renewal of candidates as moral preceptors: A vote for me is a vote for morality. A vote against me is ... . 
    The implication is clear, and it is especially corrosive when it is peddled by candidates who actually believe it.  The very concept of disagreement becomes disreputable.  Adversaries are not merely opposed, they are reviled. Settled discussion of the public interest becomes impossible.
      Exhibit A: Our recent election.  As the Republican Party tries to make something useful rise from the ashes of that defeat, it has an opportunity to help the country by insisting that the Christian right learn proper restraint. In this, the GOP would be a liberalizing influence, in the broadest, non-partisan sense of that term. What nice irony that would be for a party that has caused and received so much harm through its obeisance to right-wing zealotry.
     
   
   

Now That It's Over

    My Democratic friends are glowing with relief this week.  They feared Mitt Romney would be elected and impose a dark, conservative vision on the country.  I thought their fear was slightly off the mark.  Mine was that Romney would prove incompetent to lead the country in any direction.
    He tried, in effect,  to lie his way into the White House. Had he succeeded, he would have arrived with very little credibility and a conspicuous lack  of essential skill.  His repeated gaffes in the campaign were not mere slips of the lip.  They were the blunders of a man without a grasp of public leadership.
    Our system gives us means to curb a president who offers to go to extremes.  It does not equip us to endow a president with abilities he simply doesn't have.

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    Lewis Carroll's White Queen would have been untroubled by Romney's shape-shifting  candidacy. She boasted that she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast."   Those of us who can't may yearn to see through the smoke screen at last and discern what the country has escaped or gained by re-electing Barack Obama.
    One of my guesses is that we have gained a higher quality of appointments to the federal judiciary.
    The process of judicial appointment has fallen toward a low state  as the country has become progressively more comfortable, alas, in viewing the courts as surrogate legislatures.  Candidates for the bench are assessed in the kind of terms once reserved for elective office -- terms that jurists of an earlier era would rightly have found insulting.
    If one were to choose a sports analogy  (and I ask  forgiveness for doing so) it would be something like this: We no longer mind the notion that the referees may throw the game.  We have settled for wanting referees who will throw it our way.
    As a result, the federal bench is peppered with men and women who are noted for ideology over ability.  Romney did not manifest the kind of mind that would have respected the difference. I think President Obama displays a higher regard for what used to be known as "judicial temperament."

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    The people who went to the polls were voting for or against something and presumably believed they understood what they were doing.
    What was it?
    Let us note, regret and pass beyond the truth that some opposition to President Obama is racial. The better point is also the larger one. The country as a whole elected an African American president and then re-elected him in difficult circumstances.  This should be a matter of pride and hope.
    Some others no doubt voted against the president because they felt his administration had begun to display the body language of a stalled enteprise. Opinions will vary on how much of this should be laid to him, how much to fickle circumstance, and how much to the relentless effort of Congressional foes to sabotage his work.  Fairly or unfairly, voters could have felt that blame should be fixed where credit would be taken if matters were in a better state.
    Anti-Romney voters could have rejected him for a dozen reasons. His campaign reeked of dishonesty.  His expressed view of the American public was a caricature.  His philosophy of government was a mystery because he intentionally made it one.  If he really was a conservative, he was a ham-handed and myopic one.
    But what about the affirmative view of choice?  What about the voters who were selecting something they wanted?
    A vote for Republicans or Democrats has traditionally been viewed as a vote for smaller or bigger government. This formulation is no longer apt. Our central government will remain huge no matter who has the White House. Several Republican presidents rank high among architects of larger government enterprise.
    The useful differences between the two parties would have more to do with priorities for effort, with breadth of initiative, and with appropriate restraint.  Republicans would be the party more wary of the destructive power of taxation and less ready to view government as a problem-solver of first resort.
    There is a useful place for this point of view in our national deliberation of ends and means.But it has been lost or, to speak more precisely, abandoned by those in control of the Republican Party today. They have overdosed on a toxic mixture of political extremism, intolerant religion and cultural bigotry. 
    Sad to say, some voters wanted to choose exactly that.  But let's hope that most Republican voters merely wanted to express the not unreasonable view that our government's reach has exceeded its grasp and its ability to pay the bills in a responsible way.
    And those of us who chose the Obama ticket?  I'm guessing most of us feel that the greater inclusivity of the Democratic Party is right as a matter of principle, and far more realistic as an approach to governing a country where diversity is on a steady march.

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    Confession time:  During my working years I was a journalist. 
    My mother never knew.  I told her I was a piano player in a bawdy house. I thought this would suit her better than knowing that her son was a member of the media.
    But even given the public's low regard for my old trade (Mom was not alone by far) I remember it fondly.  Thus I am vexed by some of what passes for journalism today.
    Of the hucksters at Fox News we can only say that they are -- well, hucksters.
    And surely I am not the only one who would like shelter from the widespread blizzard of post-election analysis.  How many ways are there to say that people who favored the Democratic point of view prevailed through the cunning tactic of voting in greater numbers? And how many times must it be said?
    I am reminded of the job description for journalists:  They sit on the sidelines of the battlefield until the fighting is over. Then the journalists ride down onto the battlefield and shoot the wounded.