Jonathan Todd

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.”

What?

That is surely the sound of a President splitting hairs to such an extent as to abdicate leadership. While the Economist’s chronicling of the American left’s despondency with Barack Obama says as much about the lack of backbone and realism on the part of the American left as it does about Obama, this backbone would be significantly fortified by genuine leadership from Obama. 

He seemed to show this leadership when he initially appeared to endorse the plans for the Cordoba Centre in NYC with words which Alex Massie accurately described as his ”best words in god knows how long”. Yet he quickly rowed back from this act of principled leadership with the words I quoted at the start of this blog.

The likes of Harry Reid and Howard Dean may have shamefully betrayed the best American instincts in voicing opposition to the Centre. But Obama should be bigger and better than that.

If ‘yes, we can’ means anything it should mean, at least, ’yes, we can do things in a different way from right-wing Republicans’. I’ve consistently argued that Obama should reach across the aisle to form a radical centre with reform-minded Republicans and these Republicans have consistently proved themselves conspicuous by their non-existence. Obama’s instinct is invariably to seek compromise and to split the difference and such instincts on the part of the President are a precondition of America finding a radical centre. But non-Democrats being willing to play ball with Obama is also a precondition of a radical centre and this precondition has not been satisfied. The right response to this is not equivocation but for the President to draw some lines in the sand.

And a line in the sand should have been drawn over the Cordoba Centre.

Obama should have been clear that the aim of Al-Qaeda is to divide Americans against Americans; to make American Muslims be Muslims first and Americans second. It is astonishing that the likes of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have opposed the Centre with logic – I use the term loosely – consistent with that of Al-Qaeda. America, obviously, needs to rise above such logic and demonstrate that it embodies and will continue to embody virtues of plurality, tolerance and diversity. This is why the Cordoba Centre matters. If it doesn’t go ahead, America will have compromised on and been seen to have compromised on its most precious values.

America is a beautiful idea as much as it is a wonderful country. Just as Al-Qaeda is an appalling idea as much as it is an organised terrorist network. If Obama can’t spell out and stand his ground on the relevance of the Cordoba Centre to this, he’ll only have himself to blame if the Democrats find themselves lacking in activists in November. Ok, some Republicans will be even less likely to his friend but they don’t want to his friend anyways and Obama should stop pretending that they do. Instead, he should concentrate, like Harvey Milk said, on giving his supporters some hope. This doesn’t mean stopping being pragmatic; stopping cutting deals with Congress where they have to be cut, as they had to be on health care.

But it does mean clearly and unambiguously articulating your most important beliefs, even if these beliefs may not be shared by everyone. In fact, it is even more important when they are not shared by everyone. Obama seemed to promise all things to all people when he became President, which always made his presidency a hostage to fortune, but the very least that we could expect him to be was more sane and humane than the administration that went before him and Republicans of that vintage. This demands that he sees the Cordoba Centre for what it is – everything that is best about America – and says so very loudly and clearly. Everyone who cares about all that is best about America should hope that he is capable of this.