Don't Give Mr. Obama a Honeymoon

Two buttons: 'Work for Peace' and 'Respect Life!'

Mary Meehan

There is nothing in our Constitution or laws that provides a "honeymoon" period for a new president. But it has become traditional for the losing party in a national election to be nice to the winners for awhile. The media, too, traditionally build hopes for the new administration.

Being courteous is fine. We need more respect and civility in our politics--can't have too much. Yet there's a tendency to give excessive deference to the winning presidential candidate. This leads many to downplay serious reservations about new cabinet choices and new policies.

Republican leaders are inclined to follow the tradition with President-Elect Barack Obama. Many media outlets go much further, covering Mr. Obama and his family in an absurd and fawning way--to the point of encouraging a personality cult.

Party officials and media people will do whatever they want; but it would be a great mistake for pro-life and pro-peace activists to follow their example. Lack of principled opposition early in a presidential term can lead to hubris in the president--and even more hubris in the White House staff. Personality cults override doubts about bad policies, and they corrupt politicians and their followers.

Most pro-life activists, including ones who liked Obama for other reasons, could not back him because they knew about his radical support for abortion. Many voters were not aware of that support, since major media glossed over it. Now, however, abortion groups are lining up to collect their rewards. They expect executive orders that promote abortion and embryo research. They want Congress to pass a Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) that would wipe out state abortion restrictions such as waiting periods, parental consent, and informed consent. FOCA also would lead to restoration of public funding of abortion where such funding is now barred, thus forcing many more citizens to support financially something they believe to be deeply unjust.

In 2007 then-Sen. Obama promised Planned Parenthood that signing FOCA would be "the first thing I'd do as president." Given the economic crisis we now face, it's doubtful that Obama and his advisers really want to start a huge battle over abortion early in his term. But pro-life groups are right to wage a major campaign against FOCA right now. Those groups must make it clear to the President-Elect and other Democratic leaders that they will pay a heavy political price if they try to move FOCA through Congress. Pro-lifers must send the same message to Democratic members of Congress--especially House members, who face re-election in just two years.

Two good occasions to send the message are the Jan. 22^nd March for Life in Washington, D.C.--just two days after the presidential inauguration there--and the Jan. 24^th Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco.

If a President Obama has the chance to appoint one or more new members of the Supreme Court, abortion forces will see this as a great chance to preserve Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. As the old saying goes: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Abortion foes can use the occasion to mount a public-education campaign that describes the outstanding weakness of Roe from a legal and constitutional point of view. They need not rely on conservative legal scholars alone to do this. Leading liberal scholars have conceded Roe's great weakness; but most citizens are totally unaware of that fact.

Peace activists, most of whom backed Mr. Obama over the more hawkish Sen. John McCain, are unhappy about key people Obama has named for foreign-policy jobs. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), his choice for Secretary of State, supported the war in Iraq for a long time and has hawkish inclinations in other areas as well. Other appointees--and Obama's planned retention of Defense Secretary Robert Gates--worry those who want to see an end to American interventionism abroad.

Now is the time for antiwar leaders and grassroots activists to speak out loudly and clearly. Besides all the ethical arguments against a militaristic foreign policy, they should make the obvious economic argument: We cannot afford a policy of perpetual intervention and war. It's bankrupting us. The public debt is now so high that most of us can't even wrap our minds around it.

Yet many antiwar Democrats, loud in their criticsm of President George W. Bush for years, are eerily silent about Obama's choices for major foreign-policy positions. And many are quiet--as they were during the long presidential campaign--about his plans to leave a large "residual" force of U.S. troops in Iraq and to intensify the war in Afghanistan.

Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com asked in his Dec. 5th column: "Where are the 'antiwar' liberals? They're on their way to the Inauguration, and you'll have to pardon them if they slam the door of the limousine in our faces." Antiwar.com is a libertarian-oriented website; Raimondo and its other writers have no obligation to either major political party. They realize that large portions of both parties--whom they call "the War Party"--have backed interventionism for many decades. In an earlier column, Raimondo declared a good policy: "Antiwar.com will criticize the new administration when and where it merits it, and praise them when they've earned it--no more, no less."

If words alone don't do it, peace activists will have to take to the streets again, marching in ever-larger numbers. And they'll have to find and back many antiwar candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, in the 2010 congressional elections.

It's important for them to back the efforts of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) for a continued and stronger antiwar presence within the Republican Party. And it's imperative for pro-life activists to build a strong presence in the Democratic Party. Both activist groups have their work cut out for them. One day, perhaps, they will realize that they should work together.

The page on this site previously called "Campaign Watch" is now titled "Life Watch on Washington." It will carry occasional columns on the new administration and new Congress. It will highlight what they do to defend--or attack--the right that underlies all other rights we have: the right to life.