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.

In several posts, I've slipped in criticism of the Left for being "insensitive" toward the Right. Enough commenters took me to task that I suspect this topic is worth its own thread.

Part of the background of my accusations against at least some people on the Left for being degrading/disrespectful against the right is the long history of the Left calling the right "crazy" for advocating nuclear stockpiling and "racist" for, well, being racist. To the Left, these seem like factual descriptions. Consider that they are both false characterizations but also are contributing to and even worsening the problems these people on the Left would like to see solved.

I at one time agreed that the acceleration of the nuclear war preparations was sheer madness--Dr. Strangelove was one of my favorite movies. But then I started reading the work of James Blight, who is now in the Watson Institute of Brown Univ. He was first educated as a psychologist and then became a widely respected expert in international relations. At the core of his work is his psychological idea that "realistic empathy" is fundamental to international relations. Put simply, he advocates getting to know the positions and motivations of world leaders, not in a psychotherapeutic sense but in lay terms. He believes that if you want to solve problems, then you must be exquisitely sensitive to the people you want to influence. Demeaning comments--even subtle ones--are the most powerful means for worsening relations and making problem solving impossible. Armed with those principles, Blight is the one of the few academics and the only psychologist who has ever been allowed to conduct extensive interviews with world leaders, including Gromyko, Castro, Rusk, MacNamara, and more. Accordingly, Blight and a few other academics orchestrated a version of his critical oral history for ex-Iranian president, Bill Clinton, and many others who hope to expose missed opportunities in Iran-America relations.

As to my the label, "crazy," Blight counters with detailed accounts of the influences that propelled leaders into the arms race. His account reveals that the leaders are human beings faced with impossible situations and coming to more and less reasonable conclusions. The word "crazy" just doesn't wash, and it makes sense that calling, for instance, Reagan, "crazy," which is what most academic psychologists studying nuclear war did, only alienates.

SIt is arguable that a significant problem in race relations is the Left's reverse degradation of white people for being racist. While it's true that they are, the venom and arrogance of that pronouncement did drive white people further out of the mainstream. They were judged for being judgmental, and they got the self-contradiction in that process.

Likewise, I think the current political debate is, as many have complained, rife with demeaning comments. Obama is being trashed from the Left and the Right. It is incredibly tempting to rant; I've done it a fair amount. And it can be difficult to distinguish between a fair appraisal and a demeaning expression. But I think Obama is spot on when he argues that we need to disagree without being disagreeable. I just don't think he appreciates how incredibly difficult it can be to even know when you're being disagreeable, or insensitive.

If by "sociopath," we mean someone who has no real principles and no genuine feeling for anyone he serves coupled with a better than average ability to con people into believing that he is principled and caring, then the Left and the Right are doing a good job of defining Obama as a sociopath. What makes this drumbeat tragic for me is that there is overwhelming evidence that he fits the opposite characterization.

My evidence concerns extensive readings I've done in which quotes of people who actually knew him characterize him as exceedingly genuine, thoughtful, deeply caring, and always concerned to see the best in people with whom he disagreed.

We're just not ready to believe that such a politician exists, because even moderates see people through the lens of prevailing morality that tends to reduce people to caricatures of good and bad. My hope is that Obama will keep leading us, as he did in his speech on race, to empathetically and yet credibly understand each other. His realistic empathy for white racists of the sort who voted against him in Pennsylvania was unique. He was sensitive and used detailed analysis to make the case that these people were understandable and deserving of respect rather than creeps, as so many on the left have said for the past 48 years.

I have plyed realistic empathy in my work as a prison chaplain, a consultant to conflicted businesses, and as a psychotherapist. So I am privy to a case being made in the social sciences that the category, sociopath, doesn't apply to anyone. There's no such thing as a person who doesn't care. That's an appearance. I think that evolving understanding will help us terrifically to more accurately understand people. And I believe that Obama will be a leader in helping us to become students of realistic empathy and use it in our private and public lives to solve the problems that plague us.

In analyzing him, I'm not saying that there is no such thing as a deceitful person who is unable to care, or who's caring is repressed. But this one-sided caricture of him is so automatic and unthinking that it's difficult to see it as anything but a moralistic prejudice against Obama. I realize I'd have to write a much longer piece to be very convincing here, but I just want to suggest that, perhaps, it's just plain prejudicial to caricature him as an uncaring, unprincipled man.

A TPM blogger who calls himself Trailerville made my set-up point. But I think it needs a bit of elaboration. He quoted Clark's most inflamatory statement to help make the overall point that Obama was correct in distancing himself from this statement. I add that many people on the Left denied that Clark was being disrespectful, thus exemplifying the tendency of any conflicted parties to deny that they are degrading each other.  What's at stake in making this point? The Left is making Obama's candidacy more difficult by pressuring him with threats of nonsupport, pressuring him to say things that will make it exponentially more difficult to reach the crucial 20 percent of voters in the center. And they're doing so based on misguided interpretations of what's happening.

Clark said,

<blockquote>I don't think <I>riding in</I> a fighter plane and <I>getting shot down</i> is a qualification to be president."  [Emphasis added.]<blockquote>

Of course, this is a patently ridiculing statement that demeans McCain's service, as Trailierville said. But even Josh Marshall misses that point, as do the bulk of pro-Obama bloggers who are gradually demoralizing themselves and each other, thinking that Obama is some kind of wolf in sheep's clothing, a closet moderate. I worry that they will do what they've done in many crucial elections in my lifetime, which is to so demoralize themselves that they will stay home and allow the Republican to win. Moreover, they're pressuring Obama and themselves broadcasting these grossly ridiculing statements making it much more difficult for the Average American to get that Obama is a reasonable guy, that he's not arrogant, effete, looking-down on people, etc.

The Left's denial problem is just a part of human nature. It is uncanny how people in general can be trashing their spouse, boss, co-worker, or nominee and argue that they aren't, that they're just stating facts. After all, they might argue in this case, McCain <i>was</i> "riding" in an airplane. The fact that he was also piloting planes doesn't alter the fact that he was riding. And besides, they might add, the main point is that military service doesn't qualify one to be president. 

Speaking as a marriage counselor and consultant to conflict-ridden businesses, the disrespect is the only thing the other side in the conflict can think about. It's just too inflammatory, too upsetting for the opposition and the onlookers, the average Americans, to calm down and focus on the substantitve point. The focus shifts from Clark's main point to how disrrespectful Clark is. If Obama doesn't distance himself, then the main point would become that Obama disrespects McCain's war service, thinks he was just riding in rather than piloting and thinks that all McCain did was get shot down. That is what's happened, and it's a valid reaction. Clark disrespect McCain's war service. Nevermind that he also made a valid point about anyone's war service--that, except in the case of top brass,  it doesn't qualify you to be president.

Obama is trying his damndest to overcome the inevitable gathering attack against him that he's effecte, arrogant, cold, and disrespectful. The Left wants him to kick ass, which makes him look effete, arrogant, etc. He is trying to stay within the friendly confines of ass kicking, stay in the right arena for kicking butt. He wants only to attack McCain's record as a senator and his policies. If he strays, he loses.

Incidentally, I heard that McCain destroyed 6 planes, and that the only reason his arms were so busted up is that he failed to hold his arms in when he ejected over Vietnam. McCain's record in Vietnam and in the prison camps is abysmal, but attacking him on that front would be like attacking Bush for his service in the Air Force. You'd get a cover-up you couldn't penetrate. Better to win by going down the politic road. I do wish that the supposed 32 tapes of McCain broadcasting treasonous statements from Hanoi would surface or be discredited, however. It's just that Obama can't get involved in that.