Our President Barack Obama deserves respect as our President, but he is also leader of his party and is up for reelection. Any election with an incumbent will turn on that leader’s record and who he is. There is no hiding who he is now: we have four years in which to make up our minds.
President Obama is many good things: family man, the Commander in Chief who ordered the raid that got Bin Laden, excellent writer, but he is also accused of being a number of bad things he is not.
Let me list four.
Obama is not the antichrist.
For a time I would receive links to a bizarre video claiming he was the prince of evil, but this has waned for the simple reason he is not adroit enough to be the man of sin.
If you cannot fool Glenn Beck or Bill Clinton, then you are not the clever enough to be the antichrist. Now this is a high bar for evil-competence, the Emperor in Star Wars, with his insistence of building a second Death Star doesn’t make it, but you should not vote against President Obama because he is (or might be) the antichrist.
Obama is not a socialist.
I just got back from Europe where the conservative parties are to the left of President Obama and where the French yesterday installed a real socialist party in power. Obama does not want to nationalize the means of production, he wishes the economy to remain free, though regulated, and he bailed out banks, he did not take them over.
Obama is an American progressive, not a socialist.
Obama is not a Muslim or supporting a covert Muslim agenda.
If President Obama is a Muslim, he hides it very well. Under Secretary Clinton, his foreign policy has been only a shade less aggressive than George W. Bush’s. It is not as pro-Israel as I would wish, but it is within the American mainstream.
President Obama makes a profession of Christian faith. There is no good reason to doubt this profession. In any case, being a Muslim, unlike being the antichrist, is not disqualifying. I am about to vote happily for a Mormon and would be glad to consider a Muslim.
President Obama is not a Kenyan.
The evidence that our President was born in Hawaii is overwhelming. To doubt it, you have to believe that the Clinton primary machine covered up for Obama while doing all they could to defeat him in 2008.
Really? Bill Clinton would not use a weapon against his foe.
If being not the Antichrist, being not socialist, not being a Muslim, and being born in Hawaii, were enough then we should vote for the President.
Sadly, however, it is not enough to not be some bad things. President Obama will not get my vote for what he is, not what he isn’t.
President Obama is insensitive to religious freedom.
The Catholic Bishops are not a GOP group, see his invitation to speak to Notre Dame early in his Presidency, but this President has alienated even them. When religious charities feel the need to choose between staying in business and their faith, something has gone wrong.
His views on marriage are incoherent and also show no sensitivity to protecting religious Americans.
President Obama is pro-choice.
Christians can debate how best to love the living, but not the right to life. Christian people have always stood with the unborn. The next president will pick several Supreme Court justices.
President Obama will not pick pro-life justices.
President Obama is a progressive.
Christians must consider the role of government. Good people in both parties, such as Theodore Roosevelt or Susan B. Anthony, have been progressives. Progressives have helped bring positive social changes such as votes for women and protection against big business with regulations such as pure food laws.
We do not live in the days of Standard Oil and “The Jungle.” Instead, we are in an era where government lives on money borrowed on the backs of Chinese slave labor.
If there was a day when government did too little, we do not live in that day. Government is too intrusive. We cannot afford more progressive reforms and in fact we need a smaller government to detach our rulers from the nexus of big business and big government both parties have created.
We know President Obama will grow government not shrink it. His health care proposal is an unpopular expansion of government into our lives and do so in a particularly odious and cumbersome manner. Our social fabric cannot afford more irresponsible social experimentation until we have digested the information revolution and the last forty years of changes.
We are living on borrowed money, an immoral act, and borrowed cultural capital and President Obama has made the situation worse.
President Obama empowers others more radical than he is.
A President does not govern alone, but draws on his friends. As a creature of American higher education, President Obama rightly sees himself as moderate in that circle. Sadly, his circle is to the left of most Americans.
They are too secular, too parochial, and not exposed to free market practices.
President Obama tends to draw his advisors from these circles, Hollywood, or those parts of big business friendly to the progressive movement. They are light years more radical than he and they make many of the day-to-day decisions.
President Obama inherited a tough situation, but has failed to make it better. By his own standards, Americans should consider any plausible alternative. Fortunately, there is one.
Against President Obama is a right-of-center candidate, Mitt Romney, who is competent, prepared, and represents a chance to “reboot.” He is more likely to shrink government without dangerous extreme austerity, to appoint pro-life judges, and to protect religious liberty.
President Obama will be a one term President.
