It was hard to miss the spectacle last week.
The rent a riots of the right, Alan Keyes and Randall Terry, in full glory as they were escorted toward the paddy wagon after being arrested at the bucolic Notre Dame campus; the students, pro-life and pro-choice, debating endlessly in front of the TV cameras; the Bishops and Cardinals either praising or (mostly) condemning Notre Dame for issuing an invitation to and bestowing upon our pro-abortion President an honorary degree.
No one should be shocked that a prestigious University would invite a President to speak at a graduation ceremony. And it is not the first time Notre Dame has offered a soapbox to a pro-choice democrat; pro-choice Catholics Mario Cuomo and Daniel Patrick Moynihan trod the same ground and were offered the same microphone.
Yet there are differences between now and then. Neither Cuomo nor Moynihan occupied the Oval Office. Neither had, by stroke of pen, put the U.S. government back into the business of using taxpayer’s money to fund abortions overseas. Moynihan had decreed partial birth abortion, which Obama supports, “infanticide.” Obama is also on record as supporting the Freedom of Choice Act, which would remove hundreds of existing federal and state restrictions on abortion. As a State Senator, Obama voted against providing health care to infants that had survived botched abortions. No wonder practicing Catholics found the invitation an affront and the language of his honorary degree a needle in the eye.
The real loser however, may turn out to be the President. For in accepting the invitation and sparking a new discussion about abortion, Obama has drawn renewed attention to his very out of the mainstream views. According to the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, only 8% of Americans believe, as Obama does, that abortion should be legal at any time during a pregnancy. Last week Gallup released numbers that show America has become a pro-life nation.
Why would a President, having abortion views and now a record so far out of sync with American values, want to accept a speaking invitation that he surely knew would put them on open display for a nation to see? It is a good question. Here’s betting he already regrets it. Indeed, despite his soothing words about a national discussion and a dialogue, and about finding common ground with open hearts and open minds, it would seem that Obama now wants anything but.
On Monday, the White House moved post haste to expunge the matter from the front page of newspapers and screens of the nation’s TV audience. Instead, there were New CAFÉ standards, photo ops with Netanyahu and a new timetable for Iran. His Notre Dame remarks were excised from the front page of the White House Website. Indeed, go to the issues section of the White House Website and you can’t even find the word abortion.
