Kasia July 10th, 2008
I’ve posted before about the Lord sending me “spine-building exercises”. Well, I just had another one.
I’ve had a bunch of missed calls that my caller ID identifies as “Levin for…” and I had idly wondered which Levin was trying to get money from me - Carl (Senator) or Sander (Representative). I live in Sander’s district, but I’ve written to Carl before; and with political lists being the tetchy things they are, anything is possible. I have gotten mail from the Republican Jewish Coalition before, even though I am neither Republican nor Jewish. So you never know.
Well, the phone just rang and it was “Levin for” again. I decided to pick up to satisfy my curiosity, Google searches having already failed to resolve the issue.
It was neither Levin. It was the Obama campaign.
Now, I have a high school friend who is working the Obama campaign. He gets sent around the country “trying to win hearts and minds”, as he puts it. If anyone might persuade me to soften my stance on Obama, it would be him - he’s smart, articulate, knew me pretty well in high school, and (I think) is smart enough and open-minded enough to actually hear my critiques and concerns and respond to them. I don’t think even he’d be able to persuade me, but if anyone could, it would be him.
Instead of my suave, smart high school friend, I had a clearly nervous kid who sounded like he might have been early in college, at the oldest, stumbling over his basic talking points.
I was courteous, and I was honest. I told him, upon being asked, that I was NOT an Obama supporter; that I was not registered with a party; that one of my biggest objections to Obama is his extreme position on abortion, which seemed to surprise him. So I asked if he was aware that Obama had opposed the Infants Born Alive Protection Act. He suggested that what Obama maybe thought was that the federal government had no business stepping in; that the decision should be left to the woman.
I said “I think if you look at the record, you’ll find that you’re mistaken about Obama’s thoughts on the federal government stepping in; because he’s already said that his first priority as President would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which essentially strips states of any ability to regulate abortion at all. Now, if you were to say that the Feds shouldn’t be involved in abortion but it should be left to the states, I think you’d have an argument to make - and a Constitutional one at that -” here he interjected and said, “Yeah, that’s what Roe says” - and I said “- and that’s fine, but apparently Obama agrees with some lobbyists who don’t think Roe goes far enough.” His response to that?
“Well, but if you think of the alternative, McCain, he’s more likely to appoint justices…” and something about “women’s rights”.
At that point I almost laughed out loud. I told him that I was pro-life, and that he and I had very different ideas of what women’s rights were and whether abortion was good for women.
He was obviously keen to get off the phone, but dutifully stuck to his script and thanked me for my time, said he hoped I’d still consider Obama and “sticking with the Democrats” - I told him I’d love to consider “sticking with the Democrats” if they’d have nominated a less extreme candidate. He said something about a “lot of other issues”, and we ended the conversation.
I did tell him that I respected his enthusiasm and what he was trying to do. And I concluded the conversation with “God bless you.” (I’m sure his receiver was already halfway to the cradle by then.)
He’s right. There are a lot of other issues. And those matter.
But everything I’ve seen about Obama so far, even putting life issues aside for the moment, makes me mistrust him. I’m sure he’s a genial, likable guy in his personal life, but he’s just shown himself to be too “any way the wind blows” for me. I guess the only thing I can say for him is that, in spite of some of the things she’s said that have damaged his campaign thus far, he hasn’t thrown his wife under the bus, so to speak. And I’ll trust that that’s because he loves her, not because he knows that throwing her under the bus would poll badly.
With respect to the kid on the phone, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell him some of the other things that bother me about Obama - though frankly, maybe from a tactical standpoint it’s better that I not have. You know, so he can’t be prepared to answer them from the next person? :-p OK, that was mean - I’m sorry, Kid From the Obama Campaign.
Since the kid wasn’t terribly confident, I don’t think I really gained a whole vertebra…but it was definitely good practice for me to speak up for life.
