I want to help people think about not only Obama's faith-based initiative but also about the more fundamental issue of his progressive <i>method</i>, which I think trumps his superficially centrist positions.

I was inspired by reading a post by TPM poster, Tankard. He wrote of Obama,

<blockquote>He is hardly what anyone would call liberal. In fact, he is a centrist only in terms of today's center-right American political milieu. If the American electorate had a more European and less Calvinistic attitude, Sen. Obama would be considered a conservative because of his positions on.... blockquote>He listed the now familiar litany of apparently centrist and even conservative positions.

I guess the rating of his votes as the most liberal in Congress counts for little. On a more substantive note, Tankard left out that Obama is against the measure in California that bans gay marriage. That alone ought to give this now widely agreed upon thesis a little jolt. However, as others have written, he's more difficult to peg than you seem to think. But the most substantive criticism I have of your thesis is that it leaves out the difference that makes all the difference--his method of negotiation.

His empathic, agree-to-disagree style is extremely rare at this high level of politics, perhaps unique. And that method is extraordinarily powerful. It's difficult to show that it is powerful, because this method is so unfamiliar at this level of politics and because empathy has a reputation as ephemeral and weak. We're used to power politics, and "empathic politics" sound like psychobabble.

As I've said perhaps too many times in other posts, James Blight, professor of international relations at Brown, is the foremost exponent of this emerging point of view, and he and other academics throughout the land argue that "realistic empathy" is fundamental to international relations. They would readily agree that this principle applies to any kind of relationship and that you can't reliably get people to change without it. Put most simply, if you're disrespecting people you want to influence, it's most often the case that no amount of power politics will get them to change. And if you don't understand them on their own terms aided by probing questions to help elaborate their views, you're at a tremendous disadvantage. That seems to be the record of the last 48 years. Too many times, people on the left have just alienated well-meaning people on the right and incited them to fight us. He wants to change that to the max by not only toning down the rhetoric but also actually seeing the best in the other guy's point of view or, at least, seeing how understandable it is that, for instance, white racists have the feelings they have.

This is an extraordinarily progressive method for achieving change, and his commitment to and skill in applying it mark him as the most progressive high-level politician in America. His commitment to this method undercuts many of the anti-Obama arguments concerning his positions. In his method, he first establishes a centrist--in the sense of equidistant between equal minority's views--position, and then begins pulling the right left with creative empathic strategies, like the one he's using now regarding faith-based programs. This is not centrism, as others have noted. He's not capitulating or betraying his principles or actually centrist. He's being practical about how you get the country to move in a progressive direction. He knows that you have to respect and accept people first before you can influence them.

Perhaps the best example of this process is the newly minted faith-based initiative. When I was in seminary in Dallas, I learned that Methodist Hospital had by far the lowest costs of service and served the broadest range of patients. And I was a non-denominational chaplain at that hospital and at Parkland Hospital, the place Kennedy was taken after the shooting. At Parkland, I was paid by taxpayers, and I functioned as a combination religious counselor and secular counselor, helping everyone in my path regardless of their affiliation. Atheists were no less welcome than anyone else, and I helped them on their terms without reference to religious terms and practices--zero proselytizing. When I ministered to a Christian or Jewish person, I incorporated their language and beliefs into my work, and I worked at translating secular into sectarian language and vice versa.

This is the kind of faith-based program Obama has in mind, along with his proviso that the program actually help people according to some measurable standards. While the Left may out of ignorance concerning this kind of program demean Obama for being "conservative," it makes more sense to say that he's only arguing that we need every hand we can enlist to solve our problems and that religious people have a contribution to make no less than non-religious people. Moreover, they are likely to be considerably cheaper than their secular counterparts in some cases.

Part of the proof that this is a progressive move is that the Right hates it, because they know that he's threatening them when he insists that the programs work and that they not engage in proselytizing.