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Obama Creates New Cabinet-Level Post for Rick Warren |
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OK, not really. But one would have thought so, judging by the reaction to Obama’s recent announcement concerning Warren. The outrage from the left and the coverage from the media has gone off the charts, at a level that would have been appropriate if Obama had named him, say, Secretary of Religion and Faith and then endowed him with the powers to shape the administration’s social and moral agenda. But that’s not at all what Obama did. He simply asked Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Here’s what will happen:
Warren will stand up and pray something nice and religious and patriotic sounding that is carefully crafted to offend as few people as possible, and then he will sit down. The next day, he will leave Washington and go back to being a pastor and an author. That’s all. It will be that innocuous.
Now I can undersatnd why people don’t like Obama’s choice. I myself was disappointed. Certainly someone like legendary civil rights leader Jospeh Lowery would have been a much more historically appropriate choice, but in the end, how much do symbolic selections such as these matter? How much of our breath should we spend fussing and flapping over choices that have little or no lasting consequences?
By contrast, consider another selection Obama made on the very same day. Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa was named Secretary of Agriculture. Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director of Organic Consumers Association, had this to say about Vilsack:
Obama’s choice for Secretary of Agriculture points to the continuation of agribusiness as usual, the failed policies of chemical- and energy-intensive, genetically engineered industrial agriculture. Americans were promised ‘change,’ not just another shill for Monsanto and corporate agribusiness. Considering the challenges we collectively face as a nation, from climate change and rising energy costs to food insecurity, we need an administration that moves beyond ‘business as usual’ to fundamental change—before it’s too late.
The outrage we should be hearing over Vilsack’s nomination has been drowned out by the uproar over Rick Warren. But clearly, Vilsack will have a much greater impact on the policies of the Obama administration, and Obama’s decision to pick a corporate schill for a cabinet post is much more troubling than his asking a homophobe to say a prayer.
There is so much happening so quickly right now in the nation and in the world. We’ve got Obama’s cabinet appointments, Bush’s eleventh-hour antics, the seemingly endless spate of corruption scandals, the bailout fiascos, the economy that continues to tank, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mounting tensions in Iran and other places, and a host of other critical issues. With all of this screaming for our attentiton, the person who is picked to say the invocation at the inauguration is really of no consequence.
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