“Well, if that’s the way he runs his campaign, I don’t really know if I want this guy to be my president”-- is a refrain I have heard from those covering the Faith and Values operations of both John McCain and Barack Obama.
As regards the Senator from Arizona, the most common complaints are well known (and have been made frequently by those reporting on other aspects of his campaign). The Maverick’s religious outreach division is said to be rudderless, disorganized, and lacking any coherent vision for scoring God Votes.
Compare this to the Obama team, an outfit so meticulously organized and relentlessly focused on The Goal that some observers (of an anti-authoritarian bent, admittedly) have mentioned that it kind of creeps them out.
What’s so good--or imposing--about the Obama F and V shop? To begin with, it has a state-by-state, multi-denomination plan in place. It has a vast array of personnel, ranging from battle-hardened operatives, to civilian Enthused Religious Voters."
It has a website specifically devoted to religious outreach (which you can peruse in Spanish, if you so desire). It has a Swiftboat Rapid Response Unit. Its mission: to respond to any faith-based slight with overwhelming and superior rhetorical spin. The unit was deployed a few weeks back when James Dobson chimed in on the subject of the senator’s hermeneutical worldview (Dobson engaged in a second, and strangely underreported, go-round with the Senator this past week).
And now Team Obama has a magazine as well (which I received from the campaign in pdf. form and can't link to here). This would be the web-glossy American Values Report. Think of it as an encyclopedic compendium of the campaign's initiatives. Too, it's a useful resource for those citizens with an overwhelming need to feel empowered (see below).
What does one find in volume one? Bios of the Senator and his wife. Press clippings featuring favorable assessments of the candidate. There are pictures of, and testimonials from, the interns (hey kids!) who, coincidentally, hail from precisely the faith traditions that will be in play come November.
On the final page there is a sort of community bulletin board whose ostensible goal is to get citizens involved, feeling like they're part of the process. Want to host an “American Values House Party” (a canny bit of grass roots F and V technology invented by Obama’s crack core of engineers)? Sign up here. Want to help draft the Democratic Party Platform? Sure. Your input is valued. Just email us at this address.
One item that did not--could not--escape my attention was the following:
Get involved today!
Join us in prayer
We also invite you to join our
morning prayer call (via phone), which
takes place every Monday through Friday
at 8:30am CST. If you would like to
listen in and pray silently with us, just dial
(866) 228-9900 and enter the pass-code
1175507#. We’ve been joining together
in interfaith prayer since before the
campaign began. Feel free to join us!
Central Standard Time? Damn! These Obama folks have thought of everything. No need to inconvenience the Red State faithful with complex conversions from EST.
Having made the inconvenient conversions myself I called in this morning to participate in prayer. I dialed. I Entered my pass-code. I prepared to commune with the divine via telephone with a bunch of invisible strangers whose bonds have been forged in the hopes that an un-naive politician from Chicago will become president.
And this is where, I am astonished to say, Team Obama drifted into McCain territory. Unless the folks on the other end of the phone were praying silently themselves, my surmise is that the technology failed or the prayer meeting was canceled. The whole experience left me feeling unempowered and sensing that my spiritual input was not valued.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
