Choice and Honor
My father was a devout Catholic until he died in 1977. In about 1962 or 1963 he got into an argument with the pastor of his parish, Father McGuire, another Irishman, over the changes the Church had begun instituting that culminated in the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II.
My father was what we would call today a traditionalist. For him being a Catholic meant masses in Latin said by a priest with his back to the faithful. Father McGuire was younger and held that the Church needed to modernize. Part of that modernization meant masses in the vernacular with a less authoritarian role for the priest. My father was active in the parish since he had several kids in its school. Evidently he used to have some heated arguments with McGuire over church doctrine. My dad didn’t argue politely; he argued passionately as did McGuire from what I’ve learned.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my old man over the past few weeks, and the recent controversy over Scott McClellan’s tell-all book brought my dad’s actions 45 years ago into focus. One response to the McClellan’s book really resonated with me. Bob Dole wrote an email to Scott McClellan where he calls him a “miserable creature”.
There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.
Bob Dole gets it. If Scott McClellan truly believed at the time that the decision to go to Iraq was wrong, then he had a moral obligation to speak up or resign. When a man finds himself doing a job that he deep down believes is morally wrong, than it is his moral duty to himself and if he’s religious, to his God, to do what he can to change the situation and failing that, to quit.
McClellan wasn’t in the military. He wouldn’t have been court martialed for disobeying orders. If he had voiced his disagreement with administration policy at the time, the worst outcome would have been the president demanding his resignation. There would have been public statements of wishing him the best, and he would have landed a cushy job at a university, thinktank or lobbyist firm.
Similarly Barack Obama’s recent announcement that after 20 years he was leaving the Trinity United Church of Christ where Rev. Jeremiah Wright has preached his paranoid and racist beliefs meets Dole’s “miserable creature”criteria. If Obama disagreed with the pastor, it was his moral duty to either confront him and if that failed to temper Wright’s ravings, to quit the church. There are thousands of churches in Chicago, and had Obama truly disagreed with Wright as he now claims, he should have quit the church years ago. But he chose to stay.
My feeling is that Obama belonged to Wright’s church because it gave him “street cred” – something in common with the African-American community that his elite upbringing couldn’t provide. I suspect that he never believed what Wright said, which would explain why he seemed so incredulous at first when outsiders looked seriously at the pastor’s statements. Why should the press and the rest of the country take Wright’s rantings seriously if he didn’t?
If on the other hand he did believe Wright’s rhetoric, throwing him under the bus now shows that Obama will steamroller anyone who stands in his way. At this point Obama can’t win on the issue, and why he decided three months after the Wright controversy started making the front pages shows that once again Obama is a poor decision maker. The controversy was dying down – except among people like me who aren’t going to vote for him anyway. Yet inexplicably he decided to fan the flames again by cutting ties with Wright.
For the final 15 years of his life my father refused to step foot in a church except to walk his daughters down the aisle at their weddings. He considered himself a Catholic up to his death, but for the last decade and a half he refused to attend mass or take sacraments.
Unlike McClellan and Obama, my father didn’t have a choice. There was no Catholic church that maintained its pre-Vatican II traditions. He spoke up and fought for what he believed in and when that failed to change Church policy, he stopped going to church. From what I understand it wasn’t an easy choice for him, especially for a man as deeply religious as he was, but he did it.
Like Bob Dole my father was a war veteran; he knew about choices and honor, how it was often necessary to make hard from the former in order to maintain the latter. My father finished school in the tenth grade, served in the military and spent the rest of his life working in the trades, yet he understood something that neither McClellan nor Obama do not after all their university degrees and experience at the very pinnacle of our society. Did he and Dole pick it up on the battlefield, or was it a product of their generation? Perhaps it isn’t something the Greatest Generation had but that their children the Baby Boomers lack.
We are confronted by such choices every day of our lives, and over time our choices stand as a measure of our character. My father was not the greatest; for most of his life he had a drinking problem and our family suffered as a result. But it gained from his work ethic that kept food on the table through troubled times, as well as from the protection of a man “blessed” with 4 daughters growing up in the 1960’s. All of my siblings are decent people with one glaring exception – my 2nd sister who turned her back on us and took to her husband’s family instead of her own. We have all become successful, and my father played no small part in that even if he died when I was a kid.
McClellan will become wealthy from his books, and Obama might yet become president. However both men pale in comparison to my father when it comes to their character, and Dole’s email says why.
McClellan and Obama won’t understand it and neither will their supporters for whom “character” is a meaningless term. But one day McClellan will wonder why his fame has been fleeting, and if Obama fails to win in November – or perhaps even if he does – why History has judged him so harshly. And when this happens perhaps they will read Dole’s email and see what the former senator from Kansas and World War II hero understood that they did not.
GW:
I have not had a chance yet to welcome you to the Council so let me take this opportunity. Welcome.
As to your essay above, it is impossible to underestimate the importance of character. People who live by their principles are fundamentally different from people such as Obama, McClellan, and the millions of other of their ilk whose life is a constant weighing of the expediency of alternatives. You can always expect the former to act in accord with their deeply held beliefs, usually no matter how tough the going. The latter will bend with the wind and twist to take any short term advantage. It is why I am so afraid of an Obama presidency and the train wreck it portends to be during this period of war and danger.
That’s a lot of words to say, great post.
3 June 2008, 9:58 pmThe Glittering Eye » Blog Archive » Eye on the Watcher’s Council:
[...] The Razor, “Choice and Honor” [...]
4 June 2008, 10:26 amMaxwell James:
I’m an Obama supporter – though by no means a full-throated one – and I don’t consider character to be a meaningless term. Unlike you, I think Obama showed some character in how he managed the Wright escapade.
First off, he did not “throw his pastor under the bus”. In his first speech about Wright, he was quite explicit about this. But even in the speech following Rev. Wrights comments to the media, he did not condemn his pastor personally, but simply and forcefully proclaimed his differences with the man.
Second – who are we to say why Obama joined Trinity at all? In his book, Obama is quite clear about his reasons: he was moved into the faith by Trinity’s social gospel. There is no evidence that Trinity’s social gospel is insincere, and it is easy to see how adherents might continue to attend because of it, even if they were troubled by some of the Reverend’s more vociferous preaching.
There is doubtless some opportunism in Obama’s timing – he clearly didn’t think his pastor’s comments would receive such attention, and I remain troubled by the political naivete he displayed in this regard. But given the situation he had brought upon himself, he handled it about as honestly and transparently as could be expected. He’s not perfect by any means, but for a politician, he still strikes me as being reasonably honorable.
4 June 2008, 1:39 pmonerable:
the forest for the trees. cry with me, but guard well.
4 June 2008, 3:01 pm-russel crow
Scott Kirwin:
Maxwell James
Reverse the situation and have McCain attending a church whose pastor preached White Power for 20 years. Imagine the pastor blaming black people for all the ills of America including AIDS and 9-11. It’s not much of a stretch: there are white supremacist churches all over the country that preach this cr@p today.
Then tell me that McCain was “honorable” after attending the church for 20 years.
I figured you wouldn’t get my point.
4 June 2008, 5:30 pmMaxwell James:
Scott,
Trinity is not a black supremacist church – it preaches a so-called “black value system,” yes, but one does not equal the other. Trinity UCC has some white congregants; how many white supremacist churches do you see that have any black congregants whatsoever?
In a country with a white majority and a long history of racial discrimination, proclamations of black power (or even a “black value system,”) simply do not mean the same thing as proclamations of white power. This does not mean Obama’s church is above criticism, but claims that it is an essentially racist, supremacist organization need to be supported with better data. “Flawed and biased” does not equal evil.
Here’s a better example: if McCain had attended John Hagee’s actual congregation for twenty years, but chose it based on its evangelical message and its support for the state of Israel, then disengaged in the manner Obama has – then yes, I would consider his actions reasonably honorable. Not perfect, not above criticism, and it would definitely impact my choice of whether or not to vote for him.
4 June 2008, 6:53 pmScott Kirwin:
Maxwell
4 June 2008, 9:29 pmThanks for the clarification.
So in essence you are saying that Obama didn’t know the pastor’s opinions because these opinions were hidden from the congregation and from the personal relationship they shared?
Maxwell James:
No. I really don’t know how much he knew about Wright’s views, and obviously his culpability depends to some degree on how much he knew and when he knew it, so to speak.
I think the most likely answer is that, probably like many of Trinity’s congregation members, he knew of it and probably did hear Wright make some inflammatory statements, but discounted their importance because of the good he saw Wright do. Which is not admirable, but is a very common misdeed, and not on par with McLellan’s IMO.
4 June 2008, 9:48 pmScott Kirwin:
Maxwell
Good points.
I was just thinking that “how much he knew and when he knew it.” Considering his close relationship to the pastor, the fact that he referred to him as his spiritual mentor in his book, then I doubt it. However I’d have to delve into this issue to support my position and honestly, it’s late – and Obama’s lack of experience and foreign policy positions are much more important to me than this issue.
Still, I keep thinking that it would have showed more character by sticking by the pastor if he truly believed that he did more good than harm in Chicago. But Obama is just a politician, and the controversy threatened his campaign. So he sacrificed his relationship.
He had the chance to act decisively – by either acting quickly to ax the pastor early on or standing by him. I would have respected him more if he had done one thing or another.
But you’re right about McClellan; his “misdeeds” are far worse.
4 June 2008, 10:04 pmMaxwell James:
Yeah, I am not trying to exonerate Obama in your eyes, so much as just offer a halfway-contrasting viewpoint. I think Obama had a lapse in judgment in choosing to attend Trinity as long as he had, without (visibly, at least) trying to challenge his pastor’s views. It’s possible at this point that this lapse could cause him to lose the election. But as politician’s sins go, it’s not one that will change my own vote. Partially that’s because I’ve spent a lot of time around organizations like Trinity, and while I’m certainly troubled by the kind of rhetoric that got highlighted, I really think they do have a good side as well.
I disagree with you in that I think his reaction, once the issue came out, has been the right one.
But I’m also not much of a partisan, and I like McCain – who if elected I think will be the most effective liberal president in modern times. I prefer Obama for a few reasons, but this is not an election where I’ll be severely disappointed either way.
4 June 2008, 10:23 pmThunker...:
There are, it seems, 2 kinds of people…
Those who want conformity & homogenous world, &
those who accept others difference.
For some reason,
I’ve been told that if I disagree with others about HOW,
I have to oppose them & speak against them,
or leave.
Oddly, god doesn’t do so, but accepts ‘em all,
and eventually their souls, educated by experience
( through eternity ) all “return home”.
God should be made to obey the proper,
conformity-centric mode, eh?
That would MAKE god have integrity,
and not be a two-faced creep, right?
Since accepting that we’re all facing the future,
& all intending to improve the world
would be deranged, wouldn’t it…
Of course,
to contribute with others whom we disagree-with,
to a common cause we both value,
would require unacceptable self-certainty & depth,
but That Can’t Be, right?
Glad human meaning’s so shallow, to you.
Cheers.
5 June 2008, 11:33 amScott Kirwin:
Maxwell
Thanks for the contrasting viewpoint.
Thunker
Huh?
I wasn’t much for modern poetry which is why my poetry teacher (is that an oxymoron or what?) gave me my lowest grade ever in a creative writing course my junior year of college: a ‘B’.
I like old school poetry – the kind that uses allegorical images.
Oh, and I also like funk for the same reason.
5 June 2008, 3:56 pmJack Snyder:
One thing that I don’t believe anyone has brought up, is that since Obama’s association with Wright has lasted for 20 years or longer, than obviously he considered Wright “family”. Once you consider someone family, you have a whole different set of rules for how you relate to them.
There are members of my own family who’s religious and political views are so extreme, I would never, ever associate with them if they weren’t family. Some members of my extended family think of me as a misguided, wimpy left-wing, liberal artist. That’s okay, because (in my view) some of them are brainless, end-times obsessed, religious fundamentalist, right-wing, rascist, nutjobs. But I still see them once or twice a year at holidays and we have a grand old time.
5 June 2008, 9:33 pm