Image of Obama the pol misses the point
May 21, 2008
BY Father Undie O'Gobhar
Rev. Wright said it: "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
I am not a politician. I work for God and get very well paid from the Good Man's Publishing Companies, with Royalties Abounding,much good they do me the poor man, I be. Many Americans, perhaps, would accept that contrast with a school teacher and wife with a mortgage and three kids in Catholic schools, but that after all is butter in my mouth that melts just fine, don't you know, or perhaps that Belgian Priesteen, Damian, who went to Molokai and worked with the Wogs whose skin come off like a chapter in my latest summer blanket weight, published by Gobshite Press and soon to be featured on Oprah's Show. It's the story of a saintly but roguish Parish Bishop who helps solve Mysteries of the Rosary, while spending boodles of grant money at the University of Chicago to help them APA good souls prove that All Catholics are always racists and thugs, unless they, of course, happen to be God's Anointed who raffishly turn their black coat collars up and wear Greek Fisherman Caps on the dust cover of best sellering bodice rippers!
Well, it's after talkin' to ye, of Barack Obama, the finest young goat in the herd with the University of Chicago Themselves stamp of good approval. Now, I am a trained social scientist and a natty sacerdotal Gadabout and, thus, will caper and gambol some lifeless lines on politics and be handsomely compensated as well.
From the point of view of the Catholic social theory to which I subscribe, of which the renewal is very dear and the delivery often misses the thin slot on my Hancock Center Mail Box, and being a likely lad form Chicago's West Side is not valid. Both of them -- the politician and the cleric -- the two of them mind you, work for God, though in very different ways. One needs votes and the other - or t'other, as the impish rouges we Irish like to keen - requires millions of dollars to buy retirement homes far away from the nasty creatures - or CRAYTTHURS - to whom we minister in this vale of tears.
The cleric presides over the community meal and all of the meals that he can tuck away at no small expense to parishioners at restaurants, or at the very least their homes, and preaches the good news, which he makes as disturbingly incoherent and irrelevant as he can. He must strain to keep a balanced check book between comforting the frightened and frightening the comfortable bastards that he calls up and invites himself to dinner and Waterford Crystal tumblers of Old Bushmills Black. His most serious temptation may be the inclination to frighten everyone and everyone he chooses, to stand for the wrath of God, and pay little attention to God's Laws. Challenge is easier than comfort and Comfort has everything else in God's good Jacuzzi.
While the cleric must extort his people to generosity and forgiveness for his slights of hand and heart and hold up the example of the saints as an ideal to be largely ignored through his own clerical scorn and contempt for the people padding his wallet, the politician must create compromises and coalitions. His goal is to persuade people that he is not as big an oafish turd as a cleric, like me, and good luck to him. The cleric urges the maximum contributions from one and all - What is in It for Me, My Children - Pecunia Non Olet as Saint Jimmy Swaggert said, the politician settles for the minimum and good luck to him. The former holds up the Faithful, the latter works to preserve some votes. Both are essential for the good of society.
The paradigmatic narrative for the politician is the story of the brave young idealist who eventually sells out for votes. For the cleric, it might be the fervent prophet who accepts the limitations of what's in your wallet. Both are stories of failure, of loss of nerve, of disillusion but mostly of coin of the realm. You can not have everything - Where would you put it? Both paradigms oversimplify the complexities of human behavior. Both the cleric and the politician must go beyond the constraints of disillusion and failure and lap up every nickel there is on the wet and sticky floor.
The paradigm of the idealist who becomes a crafty politician is being applied freely these days to Obama by both the New York Times and by Time magazine, but glossed over in my newest novel. The senator, it is said, became ambitious and damped down his liberalism. He learned to compromise in the harsh internecine world of Chicago politics. I learned that when I passed the Mission Can to my classmates.
Both the New York Times and Time articles were carefully researched and well written, but they miss a couple of points - they never mentioned the influence of this humble and soberly sexy priest. Obama learned in his community work, among the Catholic parishes on the Southeast Side when the mills were closing, that one when you are out of work - 'Good Luck, Son!'
His insistence on drawing people together because you can fleece them more easily when they are all cramped up one place -- the basic theme of his campaign -- is the heart of his style of politics. You try to draw to the bandwagon everyone you can possibly attract to it and then sell them all the snake oil that they can carry home with them. That's what Machine politics means to many idealistic people -- compromising to get the votes and more than few shillings.
Moreover, Obama's voting record surely suggests he is on the liberal side of the political spectrum, but you can't govern with just liberals on your side you need all the sheep. And, more dangerously, you must sympathize with both Jews and Palestinians and fleece both of Semitic Tribes.
Will Obama be able to put together such coalitions, should he be elected? Good Lord, I know that it has been the Cat's Tripes for this Boyo!
Will there be movement toward change, folding money, negotiable bonds, inheritance gifts, income redistribution from the poor and the middle class as well as the great wealth of the super-rich corporations and their CEOs? Their mites are as good as the Widow's. A consensus on appeasement will be a much easier task than one on service and patriotic obligation, where the level of hatred is still strong in our society.
I do not think that even Michael the Archangel and all his crowd could accomplish these changes. But I am sure that He'd give it the Divil's Own Try.
If Barack Obama should become President Obama, he won't achieve compromises on all issues, but he should be sure to reward the Shepherd who wrote gushing columns in his favor. The best one can expect is the least one should expect. Such is the lot of the politician in God's service -- and always that of the cleric, too.
For a parallel point of view click my post title.
