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Well, if he is, then he's also the world's biggest cynic. After all, he schlepped it to that church in Chicago for quite a while. Was he just doing that to boost his electability?
Well, if he is, then he's also the world's biggest cynic. After all, he schlepped it to that church in Chicago for quite a while. Was he just doing that to boost his electability?
It's quite possible that it did it to boost his chances for election. Regardless of his religion (or lack of), he is still a politician.
It's quite possible that it did it to boost his chances for election. Regardless of his religion (or lack of), he is still a politician.
He was also a community organizer before he was a Senator and I'm sure that he had to bond with the man-on-the-street ethos of the 'hood in order to get anything done at that level. It's not that he was insincere (necessarily) but without street creds he wasn't going to get any cooperation from the community.
To do this kind of work I don't know that you necessarily have to prove you're "one of us" to the constituency but you have to at least show that you "get it" to some reasonable level. If you are angry and disenfranchised then you want political leadership that can embrace you where you are at. I don't seriously think Obama ever literally and personally bought much of Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric, but what he bought was the impulse behind it. Enough to work with it.
Many people can't understand that level of nuance. Everything is black or white, good or bad, and so they make the mistake of confusing Obama's ability to connect with radicalism or black anger, with him trying to conceal a radical, angry personal agenda. He's just far too smart for that. Obama has endured -- and continues to endure -- an unprecedented level of irrational hatred and bigotry (both explicit and implicit) from people who, whether they admit it to themselves or the world at large or not, can't stand the idea of a black man in the presidency. He has done it with tremendous forbearance, grace, and dignity. He has, for the most part, not been baited or taken off his game or discouraged. For that, I salute him.
It's quite possible that it did it to boost his chances for election. Regardless of his religion (or lack of), he is still a politician.
Sure.
It's possible he joined a church in 1992 because he anticipated running for President in 2008, sixteen years later. Alternately, you might claim he joined the church in anticipation of his statehouse run in 1996, though that would still require four years of advance plotting and, really, is it that necessary to join a church to run for the Illinois Senate? Statehouse candidates get pretty thin scrutiny, after all, and we're talking about Chicago, Illinois -- not exactly the Bible Belt.
Further, if we assume this methodical years-in-advance plotting, then we're faced with the fact that he picked a church with a pastor who was, shall we say, a bit problematic for Barack Obama's long-term political fortunes. So civilian Obama was crafty and plotting years in advance, but not clever enough to select a church which would provide him religious cover without any attendant controversy? This requires us to believe that he is both shrewdly Machiavellian and hopelessly hapless, all in one.
So, either that tortuous explanation is true, or he is simply religious. I'll go with Occam's Razor and assume that he is, in all likelihood, simply a believer.
Well, if he is, then he's also the world's biggest cynic. After all, he schlepped it to that church in Chicago for quite a while. Was he just doing that to boost his electability?
if you believe fraudelently claiming to be a believer is the limit of any politicans cynicism , you see more good in people than i do
I'd give him far more credit than I'd give you. Unless, of course, you were a graduate of the Harvard Law School. As were Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and John G. Roberts.
I assume a lot of politicians are somehwere close to agnostic.
Full on atheists? We'll never know.
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