*Pro-Abortion Extremists Only: *As I noted earlier today, Obama prefers
to associate with millionaires
<http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/April2009_2.html#jrm7265>. But
being a millionaire isn't an absolute requirement to work for Obama;
some in his Cabinet have quite modest fortunes. But Obama does,
apparently, have one absolute requirement
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/365nhpef.asp>.
President Obama's appointees, so diverse in many ways, have certain
underlying similarities. In the standard categories of race, age,
and sex, they are as diverse as any administration's before
them--though they adhere to a standard of good looks quite unlike
the most recent Democratic administration. Intellectually, Team
Obama is just as inclusive: not just Harvard and Yale but Columbia
and Cornell, Chicago South Siders and North Siders; stimulus
enthusiasts (Christina Romer and Larry Summers) and stimulus
skeptics (Romer and Summers in the 1990s). Strict orthodoxy reigns
only on one issue--an issue which need not be on the president's
overcrowded agenda at all: abortion. In the Obama administration
there can be no dissent from the view that abortion must be
unrestricted, paid for, and with no shilly-shallying about parental
notification, partial birth abortion, or other such measures that
would actually reduce the frequency of abortion.
Certain appointments stand out. For HHS, where abortion regulation
resides, the president chose a Sadduccee of abortion purity, Kansas
governor Kathleen Sebelius. Despite her kindly mien, Sebelius is a
strict constructionist of abortion rights. As governor, she used
her veto to maintain the rights of Kansans to obtain late-term
abortions, performed by any means necessary, by providers of various
degrees of competency, and in facilities--filthy or clean--of their
choice. Only one Obama appointee outdoes her. Dawn Johnsen,
appointed to head the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice, sees
herself as the Lincoln of reproductive freedom. To restrict access
to abortion is a kind of slavery, she wrote, "prohibited by the
Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to
provide continuous physical service to the fetus."
On every issue other than abortion, Obama is content to let a
hundred flowers bloom. It's odd because abortion is one of the few
areas of national life that neither is in crisis, nor presents any
political threat. But even odder, Obama's fundamentalism is athwart
the genuine diversity of feeling on abortion among the American public.
In this, Obama is in stark contrast to George W. Bush, who tolerated a
wide variety of views on abortion in his administration, even in his
Cabinet.
Obama's extremism on abortion sometimes leads to absurd results
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/07/embassy-row-7410554/>.
The Vatican has quietly rejected at least three of President Obama's
candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See because they
support abortion, and the White House might be running out of time
to find an acceptable envoy before Mr. Obama travels to Rome in
July, when he hopes to meet Pope Benedict XVI.
Italian journalist Massimo Franco, who broke the story about the
White House attempts to find a suitable ambassador to the Vatican,
said papal advisers told Mr. Obama's aides privately that the
candidates failed to meet the Vatican's most basic qualification on
the abortion issue.
(By way of the Other McCain
<http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/04/also-ham-and-cheese-sandwich-for.html>,
who makes a funny quip about this failure.)
As Sam Schulman says, there is a genuine diversity of opinion on the
subject. And he is also right to say that many of us have changed our
minds on the subject. (Me, for instance. Thinking about the arguments
made by abortion advocates moved me from a pro-choice position to a
confused position in the middle; I would like to restrict abortions more
than we do at present, but not outlaw them entirely.) But this
diversity is unacceptable in the new administration.
(Schulman makes a long, and interesting, argument about why the Obama
administration, and so many other pro-abortion extremists, are
intolerant of other views. I am not sure I agree with his argument, but
it is one that I will have to think about, carefully.)
- 1:32 PM, 9 April 2009
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