Posted by
Jason on Monday, July 10, 2006 10:26:32 AM
There is certainly quite alot of vitriol in Washington these days, and for the most part, it seems to flow in one direction - left to right.
But, when someone deserves some
props, I will give them. Reading the economist this weekend, there was a pretty good article on Barack Obama. I disagree with his politics, but I must admit, he at least comes across as someone who can disagree reasonably.
He told the story of a doctor who wrote to him when he was running
for the Senate in 2004. The doctor said he might vote for Mr Obama, but
was repelled by a line on his campaign website promising to fight
“right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to
choose”. The doctor wrote: “I sense that you have a strong sense of
justice, [but] whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that
those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by... desires
to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not
fair-minded.”
Mr Obama says he “felt a pang of shame”. The offending words, which he
called “standard Democratic boilerplate language”, had been posted on
his website by campaign staffers. He had them changed; not because he
had changed his mind about abortion, but because he wanted to “extend
the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had
extended to me”.
The real question is, if abortion didn't exist, would Republicans garner 70% of the vote?