Berkley Center

The Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential candidate, as you may know, gave an address at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Father’s Day (video, transcript).

Now I, personally, don’t have strong opinions about Father’s Day. It does, however, strike me as a tad bit incongruous that fathers are expected to spend Father’s Day, in its 7 a.m.-to-8 p.m. entirety, with their children and they are also expected to spend Mother’s Day doing exactly the same thing.

Senator Obama raised a somewhat similar concern yesterday, contrasting the “hoopla” that surrounds Mother’s Day with the relative calm of its June counterpart. But he had a lot of other thoughts on moms and dads in a speech that was a virtuoso display of Faith and Values politicking. In his first turn back at the pulpit since leaving Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama scored points by doing the following:

1. Erasing images of past radical church affiliations by appearing in a church that seems anything but radical—Obama's strategists must do everything they can to make voters forget Trinity. I am just getting acquainted with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Illinois, but I would be very surprised to learn that it runs a "Young, Radical Voices in Black Liberation Theology" lecture series. Giving off more of a "Martin" than a "Malcolm" vibe, it seemed like an awfully good place to reclaim and re-rollout the Obama brand of tolerant, progressive, liberal Christianity.

Of course, if Fox News is running exposes tonight about Apostolic then I will have to recant. But my hunch is that they won't and that's because Obama's team must have vetted this house of worship as carefully as his potential running mates.

2. Moving to the Center (and doing a Bill Cosby)–That's what presumptive nominees are s'posed to do in general elections and Obama did precisely that. Note, however, that he did this by venturing into 'Cos territory by dwelling on a pathology in the African-American community:

If we are honest with ourselves we'll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are M.I.A. Too many fathers are A.W.O.L.-- missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities. They are acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families have suffered because of it. You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than the African-American community.

Obama is certainly willing--I kind of wonder if some African-Americans think he is too willing (see his Philadelphia address on race)--to use the community as a means of demonstrating that he has transcended race-based politics. A strange brew, the Senator is. He is not only a liberal, and a religious liberal at that, but some sort of honorary Oakland Raider of the 70s. His motto apparently: "Just win baby!"

3. Coming down on both sides of the agency/structure argument: Do social problems exist because of flawed individuals or flawed social systems? Cognizant of the fact that entire universities of Ivy-league sociologists, radical Leftists and (unelected) Democrats have opted for the latter, Obama wisely draws our attention to the boot straps. In his own words:

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more after-school programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child.

4. Praising God, but more importantly praising women too: Aside from quoting Matthew 7:24, Obama said relatively little about religion. All the better to laud women in general and single mothers in particular. Obama roll-called all the heroic things that single moms do and illustrated by reminiscing about his own mother.

In so doing, he gave a fine speech--one that (somehow) combined communal self-criticism and political expediency into a YouTube Op that will help voters forget less enlightened rhetoric emanating from the pulpits of Chicago.