His Deftness Left Him: Obama's mistake on the contraceptive mandate



Perhaps Obama should have taken the vice-president's advice over Sebelius'.



Six months ago, things looked grim for the president’s reelection prospects. Obama seemed politically impotent after the summer’s lose-lose battle over raising the debt ceiling; speculation was rampant that the U.S. economy might be headed for a double-dip recession; unemployment hovered above 9%; Obama’s approval rating was mired in the low 40s.

            This last fact I take as the ultimate proof of Obama’s enormous political acumen. With such a disastrous set of circumstances, and after having more abuse heaped upon him than any modern president, what else could account for such a relatively high approval rating? I would suggest it was his deft approach to the job: take calculated risks, remain even-keel in the face of setbacks and criticism, know when to press the gas and when to let up.

            Presently, the same equanimity, reasonableness, and patience that kept Obama’s prospects afloat during the worst times make him the presumptive favorite in November. After a steady stream of positive economic data and a bruising fight for the Republican nomination, Obama’s approval is at 50% in some recent polls, and he leads all of the remaining GOP contenders in head-to-head match ups.

            So what explains this preternaturally deft politician’s grave misjudgment on the contraceptive mandate? The administration’s original decision not to exempt Catholic institutions like hospitals and charities gave substance to what had been a reflexive and hollow critique of Obama-style liberalism: any expanded government role in society—even when it helps ensure health care for more people—will inevitably lead to the infringement of your individual liberties. With the announcement of the original HHS rule, even Catholic liberals wholly sympathetic to the goal of expanding access to contraception cried foul—loudly. Could Obama and his team really not see this coming?

            Andrew Sullivan suggested recently in Newsweek that all of this may have been a trap: goad the conservatives into pouncing on an issue ultimately not in their favor, then quickly retreat to a reasonable compromise position that the vast majority of the public finds acceptable. Certainly, if the general election is about culture war issues, Obama will have the advantage. And after reading James Fallow’s thorough and complex analysis of Obama’s first term performance, in which he makes a strong case for Obama as chess master (one he doesn’t himself definitively endorse), it certainly gives me pause.

            But I hope Sullivan is wrong. If this was political gamesmanship, it was archly cynical—even if it worked brilliantly. Did Obama really anticipate the ire this decision would raise among a Catholic left that has defended him so vociferously? Did he really think a modest long term advantage was worth it to so anger a valued group of supporters? It’s unlikely.

            I’m inclined to think Obama simply misread the tea leaves. He probably thought that with studies showing a vast majority of Catholic women using birth control, and the public broadly supporting access to the same, he couldn’t really lose. His miscalculation was that, while for the Catholic Bishops this was about contraception, for most of us who were shocked by the original policy, it was about religious freedom—or even more, a basic respect for religious institutions and their guiding principles. Catholic hospitals and charities do copious good. Let them operate according to the dictates of their consciences.

            One nice upshot of the contraceptive mandate imbroglio is that a broad coalition, transcending ideology, party, and even sect, was able to effect change quickly and decisively. (Even if the Bishops aren’t satisfied, most of us are.) My regrets about this campaign are these: first, that it doesn't happen more often on issues of social justice, and second, that a president I admire provided the impetus with a shocking lapse of deftness.

Criminal (In)justice

I've mentioned my high regard for New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in an earlier post, and his column from a week ago, a response to the execution of Troy Davis, is a good illustration of his proclivity for advancing the dialogue surrounding seemingly intractable debates by dramatically recontextualizing the issues.
     Cleverly, Douthat never reveals his own opinion about the morality of capital punishment itself. Nevertheless, he crafts a unique critique of death penalty abolitionists, citing the imperative to address what is perhaps a more profound injustice: the abject brutality of our prison system:

Simply throwing up our hands and eliminating executions entirely, by contrast, could prove to be a form of moral evasion — a way to console ourselves with the knowledge that no innocents are ever executed, even as more pervasive abuses go unchecked. We should want a judicial system that we can trust with matters of life and death, and that can stand up to the kind of public scrutiny that Davis’s case received. And gradually reforming the death penalty — imposing it in fewer situations and with more safeguards, which other defendants could benefit from as well — might do more than outright abolition to address the larger problems with crime and punishment in America.

This point was made well last week by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, writing for The American Scene. In any penal system, he pointed out, but especially in our own — which can be brutal, overcrowded, rife with rape and other forms of violence — a lifelong prison sentence can prove more cruel and unusual than a speedy execution. And a society that supposedly values liberty as much or more than life itself hasn’t necessarily become more civilized if it preserves its convicts’ lives while consistently violating their rights and dignity. It’s just become better at self-deception about what’s really going on.

     Douthat may be right that abolishing the death penalty would simply provide cover for a penal system rife with pervasive injustice. Though for the time being this may be a moot point, as a solid majority still favors capital punishment. And it could also be argued that the type of shift in societal views required to catalyze abolition would likely indicate a greater recognition of the humanity of those incarcerated. And therein lies the rub: our dehumanization of those in prison is precisely the reason why both genuine prison reform and abolition of the death penalty are politically impossible. For now.
     In any case, two indisputable realities suggest that our broken system of criminal justice cannot be ignored by people of faith. The first is that the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation on the face of the earth, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of population, as the chart below (from Dayton Daily News) demonstrates:


    

For a nation that holds itself up as "a shining city on a hill," this is an abysmal statistic. Either we have in our nation the worst collection of human beings on the planet, or (and I'm going to suggest this is far more likely) we are failing to contend with our citizenry's shortcomings in a sensible way.

     The second reality is that these 2.3 million prisoners are often subjected to conditions that are beneath the dignity of human beings. The non-profit organization Prison Fellowship thoroughly explicates the pervasive and systemic nature of this crisis on its website. It is more than the sexual assaults that Douthat mentions. More than the rampant violence that occurs when we fail to provide the resources necessary to keep order. More than the fact that our prisons now function in lieu of yesterday's mental hospitals. We are mishandling the process of justice at every point: the way we define crime, provide representation, sentence, incarcerate, treat mental health issues, and reintegrate ex-offenders into society. All are in need of substantial reform.

     Some people commit acts for which they must be held accountable. Sometimes the punishment should be harsh, and perhaps sustained over a long period of time--or in extreme cases for the remainder of a criminal's life. But the penalty should never entail lack of mental health care, assault, or rape (or death). Nor should the prison atmosphere rob individuals of the opportunity to develop as human beings in a manner consistent with their punishment. While they are not entitled to luxuries like cable television or gourmet fare, the fundamental spiritual necessities of human beings (not defined in an exclusively religious sense) cannot be taken away. The need to sustain relationships, to maintain physical and mental health, to gain meaning through work or other activities, and to learn about the world should be recognized and accommodated. These are the rights of every person formed in the image of God.

     A foundational tenet of the Catholic faith is that regardless of his actions, no individual ever relinquishes his God-given dignity. That more than two million persons inhabit a system that violates this principle so flagrantly should be a call to arms for all of the faithful. 

Gov. Perry and the Death Penalty

"I am always going to error on the side of life," claimed Texas Governor Rick Perry in last night's Tea Party sponsored Republican presidential debate. He wasn't being ironic. Not intentionally, anyway.
   At the time, Perry was defending himself against an onslaught by his opponents regarding his decision to mandate an HPV vaccine for 12 year-old girls in his state. If his statement accurately describes his thought process regarding that particular issue, whatever its merits, good for him. But it's a maxim he seems to abandon when it comes to meting out the ultimate penalty. When in last week's debate Brian Williams asked him to reflect upon the 234 executions he has presided over as governor (a statistic that excited the audience), Perry performed his version of waxing philosophic.

   Perry's unequivocal assertion that he has "never struggled with that at all" is chilling considering the incredibly strong evidence that he signed off on the execution of a completely innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, in 2004. Aided by improvements in arson investigation forensics since Willingham's conviction, numerous experts in the field have concluded that the 1992 fire that killed his three small children was accidental and that the original indicators of Willingham's guilt are now without any factual basis. Perry knows this.

   Another likely innocent victim of Texas's liberal application of capital punishment is Ruben Cantu. While Cantu was executed before Perry became governor, it was during his term (2005) that the Houston Chronicle reported that both of the key witnesses against him admitted to lying about his participation in the crime, leading the district attorney who recommended that Cantu be charge with capital murder to believe he had made a grave mistake. Perry, however, remains confident enough in Texas's judicial system to proudly continue engineering its train of executions.

   These travesties—along with numerous cases of dubious executions and proven wrongful convictions from around the country—should humble Perry. However, the analogy he used in this same debate, conflating Galileo and climate science deniers like himself, suggests that Perry is not the type to let facts spoil his conveniently held beliefs. His callousness—or genuine inability to reflect—on this question of life and death should disqualify him from the presidency.

   In so much of the Western world, the death penalty is considered a remnant of a more barbaric time—a form of justice more suited to a society that locked the mentally ill away in barred asylums than to the more sanitized epoch in which we live. This monstrous practice is dying its own very slow death. But for now, there are still places like China, Iran, and Texas where it receives a willing stay of execution.