You’re not even likable enough, Frank Rich

[A slightly different version of the post appears at Heidi Li’s Potpourri]

Frank Rich, an entrenched New York Times columnist, finally decided to publish a wee bit of criticism directed a President Elect Obama just today, December 28. Just a tad of critique because, according to Rich, “for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.” As one  who has not been laboring under Obama reveries and who began trying to figure out whether he reminded me more of Richard Nixon or George W. Bush as far back as the fall of 2007, the this late faint awakening from a journalist of many years’ experience seems peculiar, to say the least. I know that coming out of a pleasant reverie must be difficult, but Rich is barely awake and certainly not likable enough given the narrow basis for his creeping concerns about Mr. Obama. Rich’s main beef is that Mr. Obama has displayed “his own brand of hubris and arrogance” by expending an amount of “political capital” that Rich considers “small change” because, according to Rich, most Americans who know about  Rick Warren like him.

Indeed, Rich himself kind of likes Rick Warren because: “His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change.” Sure, Warren “is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama.” (Note to Mr Rich: there is some scary circularity in the logic here.  It is no sign of acceptability of any kind that “almost every top-tier national politician” and Rich Warren are on the same side of any given issue.) With regard to Warren’s hatred of gays, Rich cannot even be bothered by anything other than Warren’s “defamation” of gays. So he apparently is not bothered by Warren’s comparison of women who exercise their right to abortion to Nazis or his assertion of the propriety of wifely submission. What is it with these men who comment on Warren? They object to his treatment of group that includes men (gays) but they cannot even note Warren’s misogynistic worldview, one in which all wives are second-class to all husbands and women exercising their constitutional rights to bodily self-determination are put on the same moral plane as Nazis.

Rich confidently writes of Obama “he’s not about to rescind the invitation.” I assume that Rich is confident of that because he does note Obama’s
“cockiness” – which Rich ultimately excuses, writing “By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.”

I wholeheartedly agree that the decision to have Rick Warren bless his inauguration is no Bay of Pigs. But Frank Rich just can’t quite pull himself out of his reverie if he calls the Warren invitation and Warren’s role in the event an “asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black President.” Having a bigoted, homophophic, misogynistic cleric headline your inaugural is likely to render the event anything but joyous for millions of Americans. What Rich regards as an asterisk, they recognize as the sharp elbow to the ribs.

Why doesn’t Mr. Obama simply rescind the invitation? It was a bad idea to extend it and the incoming President of the United States does not have to stick with bad ideas, just like he does not have to retain staff members who engage in boorish bigoted conduct (vide Jon Favreau). Mr Rich urges “humility and equanimity everywhere in America, starting at the top.” Mr. Obama has a wonderful opportunity to display both qualities immediately. Instead of hiding from the press in Hawaii, he could set up a microphone and say:

“I made a poor decision when I invited Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation.  It is difficult to withdraw the invitation now without embarrassing Mr. Warren, but I must take full responsibility for my own mistake in extending the invitation in the first place. I apologize wholeheartedly for having created this awkward situation which does, I realize embarrass Mr. Warren. But Mr. Warren’s pride is not most important thing at stake here. My own insensitivity to the concerns of gays and women led me to make a poor decision, one that is ruining the inauguration for many people who voted for me in the first place. I want to be the first to show that I can, calmly and with equanimity, change my mind when I know I have made a poor choice.”

In the alternative, if Mr. Obama cannot bear to embarrass Rick Warren by disinviting him, he can have invite a second cleric or other leader with rather different views than Mr. Warren’s regarding gays and women to stand right beside Mr. Warren and give a co-invocation.

Precisely because this is no Bay of Pigs, Mr. Obama can do something about the situation before he goes through with a bad choice. The inauguration has not happened yet. Nobody’s life depends on Mr. Obama sticking with a plan that once made might be risky to change. But a lot of people’s opinion of Mr. Obama rides on what he does about the current situation; could be that much more than “small change” is at stake. Finally, setting aside political calculus, it might be nice to have the incoming President distinguish himself from the outgoing one by demonstrating that he has the guts to recognize his own mistakes and to ameliorate or correct them for himself when he has the opportunity.