This was a difficult week for us progressives who support Barack Obama. Having secured the Democratic nomination in the midst of a volatile economy, Obama proclaimed that he “loved the markets.” And when the Supreme Court struck down the gun ban in the District of Columbia, he said amen, and when it struck down execution for child rapists, he agreed with John McCain that it was a bad decision. And, by the way, Obama’s not in favor of holding the telecoms responsible for infringing on our privacy if the president tells them to.

Then he went up to Unity, New Hampshire, and made nice to Hillary. More importantly, she made nice to him. I just hope that both of them will keep in mind that women are counting on them for their birth control. Because, that’s one of the many things that hangs in the balance in November.

Follow up:

Some time ago, I read interviews with lawyers of color who were in Obama’s class at Harvard law school, and they discussed how he got to be editor of the law review by not taking sides with the liberals against the conservatives. No one was completely happy, but both sides got something, and I assume that’s how he views the presidency. I have no problem with his bringing everyone together; what I hope is that in doing so he can reach for something more universal than a divvying of the spoils, materially and ideologically.

Watching McCain now, it’s almost impossible for me to see (through my progressive filter, of course) how anyone can say he’s on top of his game. Or not re-fighting his version of the Vietnam war. Or not entirely beholden to the corporate lobbyists he once denounced. As far as I can see, McCain is simply the anti-Obama: white, conservative, married into wealth, no longer young.

When a McCain advisor commented that a terrorist attack would work in favor of his candidacy, I got a clue about the thinking of his campaign. (Although McCain wisely moved to dissociate from him.) The Republicans have benefited wildly from the attacks of 9/11. Almost everything they have done to limit our freedoms has been justified by them, including our ill-advised war in Iraq. They have squandered billions of dollars to “prepare” every state from Idaho to Arkansas against terrorist attack, and I still run into people who think we haven’t had another one because we’ve been protected by the Bush administration. So, I suppose it’s possible that some McCain supporters could view another attack as a godsend. Can they be so corrupt that they’d accept another attack as the price of retaining power?

I can remember when McCain had a certain glow about him. He led the Republican fight for campaign finance reform (laws that he stretched in the primary). He opposed torture, because as a former prisoner of war he realized that we could hardly demand humane treatment at the hands of our enemies unless we practiced it ourselves. No more. He stood against the religious right that he now courts. Hard to believe that many people favored him as John Kerry’s running mate.

I’m not sure what led McCain to embrace George W. Bush with such gusto, but it hardly matters now. Like the tar baby, he is stuck to the president so securely that his advisors can only hope for a new terrorist attack.

In the process of writing this, I received an email from Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine and a founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives whose conference I attended in 2007. While I don’t agree with Lerner in every aspect of his analysis, he’s a brilliant man and often perceptive about what we hunger for. In this message, titled “What Kind of President Does America Need?” he says, “Instead of being realistic… we need a president who is unashamed to talk and act from a commitment to that which is best for the planet and that which most advances the capacities of the American people and the peoples of the world to be their most loving and generous and kind selves. And we need a president who can communicate and enthuse the American people and the people of the world with that sensibility.” [Surely he meant infuse, not enthuse.]

Obama, in my estimation, has done that many times over in his campaign. To his credit, he reminds his audiences that this is about all of us, not just his quest for the presidency. But now you can feel the pragmatists (and perhaps the pragmatic side of his own nature) taking the upper hand. The election must be won, the war ended, the over-mortgaged housed, the sick insured, and with every passing day new people whisper in his ear, offering their dubious services, because he looks like a winner, and they want a piece of him.

I’d like to think that Obama is the one we’ve been waiting for, but putting a gun in the hands of more and more people—here and around the world— is not what I had in mind. Maybe he will re-think that one.