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The Spectacle Blog
In the war in ideas, you have some room for hedging. I don’t actually find it shocking that Christopher Buckley went to Obama given the way he identifies Obama’s strengths. If you’re into intellectual-ish things, you’ve got to find Obama interesting in some way. It takes smarts to rise as quickly as Obama has, and our society tends to glorify youth while forgiving its excesses. Obama’s refreshing because he’s young, he “doesn’t look like other presidents on our currency” (whatever that means), and he’s not frightening to behold on a television set for the next four years. Even if some of his policies would be (natch). He writes well, which would get Petrarch’s endorsement.
You also can’t look at Christopher and say he’s stupid, or even reckless. His upbringing, let alone his genes, are imbued with traits of a chess player, that is to think a few plays ahead. It’s hard for me to think he’d operate any other way. He has made us laugh with his writing because he “gets it.” I know that his father did not plan out novels ahead of time. He would have a general idea, perhaps, but he’d go wherever the writing took him. Christopher, Bill once told me admiringly, knew where things were headed from the very beginning. Everything Bill told me about Christopher, by the way, was admiring.
I don’t want this to read like I think his was a calculating, scheming fellow trying to get himself some press. It’s actually the opposite.
I wonder whether abortion played into his decision at all. Whether he wrestled with the idea that Obama’s simply not pro-life. Or remotely pro-life, in that way that some moderates might think that partial-birth abortion is icky.
Perhaps Christopher isn’t actually pro-life, or maybe he believes that the issue isn’t so black and white. He did, at one point, support Ron Paul, which I take to mean that he found Paul’s pro-life message in addition to the other properly conservative views.
Or perhaps he thinks that Obama is malleable, which I take to be a complete mistake. Maybe there’s concern that McCain might not actually appoint pro-life judges. Even if his position papers suggest he would, there’s always that maverick tendency which sometimes hurts Republican efforts in the legal arena.
We may not know. But given his statements so far, I take it that Christopher is omitting that from consideration. I’m hardly a single-issue voter, but a new publication, called “The Public Discourse,” from the thoughtful Witherspoon Institute has a way of twisting my arm a little. Professor Robert P. George and Yuval Levin look at Obama’s response to the debate last night about his stance on infants surviving abortion.
Obama had responded that the law was simply a reiteration of a law that had already passed, just that it didn’t have the right provisions for his tastes. George and Levin write that the previous law Obama said worked just fine…
… only protected ”viable” infants-and left the determination of viability up to the ”medical judgment” of the abortionist who had just failed to kill the baby in the womb. This provision of the law weakened the hand of prosecutors to the vanishing point. That is why the Born Alive Act [the one Obama voted against —ed.] was necessary - and everybody knew it. Moreover, the Born Alive Act would have had the effect of at least ensuring comfort care to babies whose prospects for long-term survival were dim and who might therefore have been regarded as ”nonviable.” As Obama and the other legislators knew, without the Born Alive Act these babies could continue to be treated as hospital refuse. That’s how the dying baby that Nurse Jill Stanek found in the soiled linen closet got there.
Obama mischaracterized his own earlier position. When he was dealing with this question in the Illinois State Senate, he argued not that the existing law did everything the newly proposed measure would do. No, he saw the born-alive bill as “placing too much of a burden” on the practitioners of abortion, because the doctor might be challenged on whether a fetus was unviable. But look at the wording here:
‘As I understand it,” Obama said during the floor debate, ”this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that it’s nonviable but there’s, let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.’
Emphasis mine. “However you want to describe it”? Really?
He voted against it anyway, even as a neutrality clause that lifted this burden was inserted in the bill. By contrast, those who were against it on these grounds moved in favor of it.
If you’re pro-life, it’s an important enough issue that it can (and should) decide your vote. If you’re pro-choice, it’s, well, murky territory anyway where it’s rare for such a clear delineation between right and wrong exists. Yet here you have it.
View all comments (10) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by J.P. Freire
http://spectator.org/blog/2008/10/16/buckley-and-born-alive
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Glen Davidson | 10.16.08 @ 9:25PM
I'm not sure if it has to decide one's vote, as I have to believe that being pro-life extends beyond the abortion issue.
However, one would need a powerful set of arguments to balance out such disregard for the bedrock moral sense that a human's life is worthy of protection (along with the inevitable fact that abortion is an institution we're all forced to support), if one accepts the notion that our unalienable rights include at least "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". And Buckley doesn't bother at all.
It's difficult to believe that it matters to him. For me, it virtually ensures that I could not vote for Obama, though it does not mean that I will certainly vote McCain.
Glen Davidson http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
KS| 10.16.08 @ 10:01PM
If Christopher Buckley is pro-life, then it is not for religious reasons. I believe that he's an agnostic, which is probably why he joked about praying a secular prayer in his essay on supporting Barack Obama. Then again, his mistress was in the news earlier this month; she is suing him for additional child support because, she alleges, their son has ADHD.
I didn't read anything remotely persuasive in Buckley's essay. His wealth insulates him from problems that most Americans would face with Obama as president and Democrat majorities in the legislative branch.
Mrs. Jackson| 10.16.08 @ 10:22PM
I got the distinct feeling Christopher believed McCain would loose, wanted to be naughty and expand his audience with his 'prophetic' book at the same time.
The problem is of course, he's more than antagonized his base and his new audience isn't going to like his previous books.
ruth| 10.16.08 @ 10:38PM
Who is Obama? What is he? How could anyone be so cruel, so heartless? Just thinking about these tiny babies dying alone breaks my heart.
WendyG| 10.17.08 @ 9:31AM
I think you are giving this way too much thought. To me Buckley's break has much more to do with living in the shadow of famous father, than it does with abortion, or any other issue. I see it in Freudian terms, with the less-famous son seeking to make his mark, and ascend the throne. What better way to grab the spotlight and to cast off the shadow of the old man, than to reject everything the old man held dear? I just think it's funny that NRO cut him loose so fast. I wager Buckley didn't expect that. I saw a photo yesterday of Buckley schmoozing with Huffington and Kos, at some book fair. Tells me all I need to know. That, and Buckley's, shall we say, personal issues, vis a vis the son he won't take emotional responsibility for. All kinds of paternal issues rearing their ugly heads here. Chris Buckley is just the latest victim of radical chic, a desire to be liked by what he perceives as the coming new radical political clique, and and re: his father - it's the King is dead, long live the King!
Sunny| 10.17.08 @ 4:17PM
Had any of you actually read and comprehended Mr. Buckley's piece, there would have been no need for this tripe. "[Obama] is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian."
I find Mr. Buckley's piece particularly resonant due to the fact that the above description of his politics aligns 100% with my own. However, I have long admired Mr. Buckley's fiction and would have continued to do so regardless of his politics. Unlike today's Republican party (NOT conservative), I do not impose an ideological litmus test before allowing myself to enjoy an individual's creative output, and those who do will continue to consign themselves to irrelevance.
Brian| 10.17.08 @ 11:06PM
I think he wanted to attract attention to his book and Blog. If it does well, it will be for naught since his profit will be redristributed.
WendyG| 10.18.08 @ 10:06AM
Sunny, I rarely allow a differnce about politics stop me from enjoying anyone's creative output. If I did I could never read Vanity Fair, as it's generally half Bush-bashing half interesting articles. Nor would I have traveled 300 miles to see Frank Rich, who has pivoted from brilliant theater critic to Bush-Derangement Syndrome hack, when he was recently in conversation with Stephen Sondheim. But Buckley's defection means more, and in fact his writing isn't very stellar, if you ask me. And as if to prove the earlier point I made, Buckley is now writing about how "liberating" it is to have dear old dad gone. And he may even be going the Daddy Dearest route, judging from this article. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/fashion/19buckley.html?ref=fashion
Glen Davidson | 10.18.08 @ 4:32PM
"Had any of you actually read and comprehended Mr. Buckley’s piece"
Oh, I scanned it. But really, how much am I supposed to read when it's so much derivative caterwauling? Not that there is nothing to complain about regarding GWB's large government borrow and spend tactics, but it's not as if any of it is new (and most of us already disapprove).
Sure, if I'd read his derivative glop carefully I'd have seen that claim to be "libertarian" on the value of life. But you can't be a droning bore and expect people to read carefully what you write. What is more, you'd actually defend your position on abortion, rather than count on liberal prejudice for automatic praise.
As an intellectual, he's signaled that he's driven by the instincts of the herd. Last Man, who revels in the fact that "we have invented happiness," or at least simple-mindedness.
Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7