Obama's Campaign Takes a Prayer-Leak at the Kotel

Prayer or “open letter to god?” and Presidential Orientation

1) What? Are you still outraged by someone leaking Obama’s “prayer” from the wailing wall in Israel? Be still, grasshopper, all will be well. Or not.

From today’s Israel Insider:

What initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign. Maariv, the second most popular newspaper in Israel, was roundly criticized for publishing the note Obama left in the Kotel. But now a Maariv spokesperson says that publication of the note was pre-approved for international publication by the Obama campaign, leading to the conclusion that the “private” prayer was intentionally leaked for public consumption.
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However, it now appears that Maariv had collaborated with the Obama campaign in getting the “private” prayer, with its “modest” supplicaton to the Lord, out to the public, buffing his Christian credentials and showing his “humility.”
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Most politicians suffice with getting a photo-op. Obama may be the first to take a prayer-leak on the Wall.

A “prayer-leak” heh. OK, I’m done laughing. Now I just feel like sighing.

2) At realclearpolitics, an interesting take on Obama’s trip and what it might mean:

If elected, Barack Obama might make history in more ways than one. He will be the country’s first black president, but also — perhaps as consequentially — could be its first transnational president.
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His overseas tour — punctuated by his Berlin speech before 200,000 — showed him to be a potentially powerful American emissary to the world. It also suggested that Obama styles himself the world’s emissary to us — a discomfiting role for a would-be American president.

I think this is a good point. The BO campaign has ever been flavored with a vision of BO as a “citizen of the world” who happens to be American. Nothing wrong with that. Our economy has long been working to incorporate more people with this vision. But I’m not comfortable at all with that in a president. I want my president to concern her/himself with America first. That’s the job.

Berlin at times sounded as much like Obama’s coming-out party as the candidate of a transnational progressivism — in which global norms are more important than sovereign nations — as his audition as commander-in-chief.

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Transnational progressivism is closely allied to multiculturalism. Both share a hostility to American exceptionalism and seek to rein it in, by imposing global rules on the U.S. and by transcending its traditional culture (as defined by history, symbols and language). Obama, who for so long painfully sought an identity and initially found it in a black-nationalist church, clearly has affinities running in this direction.

You know, this outlook and these traits might be helpful in a variety of business settings or negotiating settings. But it simply feels as if this orientation, in a US president, would only serve to weaken our history, cohesion around our ideals and viability as a distinct nation.

While by no means perfect or even right a lot of the time, the US is still unique in many ways. If that weren’t the case, we’d be long gone as a country by now. I love Europe and traveling the world, but I love coming home more.

I guess I just want an AMERICAN president, not an American-flavored president. That’s the reason for the citizenship requirement and I actually think it’s a modest requirement. Being engaged with the world, looking outward and encouraging us to do the same are all good things. But at the end of the day, the priority should be taking care of home.

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