PERHAPS I’m just suffering a bad case of the January blues, but I confess that my inevitable disappointment in Barack Obama’s presidency kicked in before he had even tripped up over the presidential oath.
BBC online helpfully posted the running order for Obama’s inauguration and there it was: item one – Rick Warren would be reading the prayers. He is the Californian pastor who once compared abortion to the Holocaust and, by extension, women who exercise their right to choose to concentration camp guards.
Obviously, it will not take long for a President who enters office with an approval rating of 80 per cent to disappoint someone. In attempting to maintain a consensus from the start, Obama should at least have tried not to offend his natural supporters above and beyond those who voted for him simply because he wasn’t John McCain.
America is not short of pastors, so surely Obama’s team could have issued an invitation to one who was not guaranteed to enrage a sizeable minority before his presidency had even begun?
Warren is a sizeable one-man industry. His business is God and he peddles his wares from a vast church in California – one which could easily double as an aircraft hangar should the US Air Force ever find itself short of parking space. His books sell tens of millions of copies and you can bet your bottom dollar – if you still have one – that many of those who buy them did not vote for Obama.
It is entirely possible that having made such a conciliatory gesture, the new President will simply press on with his programme to “change the face of America”. But give your opponents an inch and they’ll take a mile.
It was Warren’s active support for Proposition 8, an amendment to the Californian constitution, which states that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised” in that state which places him seemingly at odds with the recipient of his prayers.
Warren’s presence in Washington last week has been described as a slap in the face to millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people who donated to, worked for and helped to elect Obama. They did this because they believed – or wanted to believe after eight years of George W Bush – that they would finally get a friend in the White House. Obama encouraged this expectation. “It is no secret that I am fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans”, he said. “It is something that I have been consistent on and something that I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.”
Perhaps, like the rest of us, LGBT voters were expecting too much. This is America, after all, where politicians at every level don’t just “do God” but do Him with bells on. Indeed it is compulsory. But when you’re a busy man or woman, you do have to be careful whom you get to speak to Him on your behalf. This is the second time Obama has suffered from an inauspicious choice of religious representative.
In his somewhat disappointing augural speech, Obama went some way to let members of the Christian right know that they would not have everything their own way. Not only did he speak directly to members of others faiths – Roman Catholics, Jews and, perhaps most importantly, Muslims – he also spoke to “nonbelievers”. Like John F Kennedy before him, Obama spoke passionately of a resurgent technology-based America – a country where scientists will once again be welcomed at the Oval Office. In part, we have Sarah Palin to thank for this – a contribution to America’s future on the scale of which she could only have dreamed of making, had she become Vice-President.
Despite the vast expectations of office, it could be argued that Obama has already changed the face of America more than many of his predecessors. His parentage places him in a better position to pull off the impossible trick of being all things to all people. However, even here, the President’s back-story is undergoing some early minor modifications. Obama has gone from being described as “America’s first black President’ to its “first mixed-race President’ almost overnight. I doubt whether this is entirely accidental. It seems that having captured the black vote so overwhelmingly Obama should now set about consolidating his support among white America, while delivering on his promise to be a President for all Americans. This should be easy. Yes, Obama looks and sounds different, but the differences between him and, say, Jesse Jackson seem to me considerably greater than the differences between Obama and JFK, who also promised a reordered America but then became embroiled in an unpopular war a long way from home.
Thankfully, the inauguration was not all bad. It was a stroke of genius to ask Aretha Franklin, recently voted the finest singer of all time by influential magazine Rolling Stone, and not a white opera star, to sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee”. But Obama will have to improve on his first day as in office if he wants to avoid hearing a worldwide sigh of disappointment anytime soon. As a gay man of no faith who also happens to be mixed-race, I shall be watching and listening very carefully indeed.
