Abortion woes for Obama?

Neil McKenty

Amidst all his economic challenges, President-elect Obama is heading towards a showdown with America’s Catholic bishops over the issue of abortion.

At their bi-annual meeting in November, the president of the bishops’ conference, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, said that while the bishops “rejoice” at the election of an African-American president, they should confront him over his support of abortion rights.

President-elect Obama’s views on abortion are reflected in the party platform. The Democrats support a woman’s right to choose. But very significantly the abortion plank was extended this year to include measures to reduce abortion. These involve strengthening the social and economic safety net to enable more women to bring their pregnancies to term.

It would seem at first glance that programs to reduce abortion are something that both sides of the abortion debate could agree on. But that is not the case, at least with the leadership of the Catholic church in the United States and also in Canada.

Cardinal George said in a news conference that while the bishops supported “social welfare programs that come to the aid of the poor,” they also would continue to lobby for legislative and legal restrictions on abortion.

It would seem from this and other episcopal statements that the primary objective of the bishops is not only the reduction of abortions but their elimination.

This reveals the inherent weakness of the bishops’ position. It is simply not realistic to think that the United States (or any other western country) will pass laws and restrictions that will criminalize abortion.

The American Catholic bishops have been at war for a long time on the abortion issue. But, after having spent an enormous amount of political capital on this issue, it is difficult to see that they are any closer to their objective, the elimination of abortions.

Nor do Catholics themselves seem to support the bishops unqualifiedly. Most polls show that about the same proportion of Catholics in the United States and Canada support a policy of restricted abortions as do the rest of the population. And despite the warnings of a number of bishops not to vote for a pro-choice candidate, exit polls found that 54 percent of Catholic voters supported the Obama-Biden ticket. Is it likely that a growing number of American and Canadian Catholics are realizing there is more merit in the gradualist approach (reducing abortions) than the absolutist one (trying to eliminate them altogether). Is it also possible that the pro-choice group is more effective in reducing abortions than the pro-life group is? And what a relief it would be if both groups abandoned their sterile debate on abortions and pooled their resources to reduce them.

It would seem that the key to lowering the rate of abortion is preventing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Pro-choice supporters such as President-elect Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, a practising Catholic, champion wider access to birth control. It’s also been pro-choice elected officials who have fought for insurance coverage of the procedure and the introduction of new and more effective contraception.

Only 11 per cent of sexually active American women forego contraception, and this 11 percent account for half the abortions in the United States. Both Senators Obama and Biden support the comprehensive sex-education programs that seem to work as opposed to advocating no-sex-until marriage programs which do not.

In addition to abortion, the bishops also said they were concerned that President-elect Obama was reportedly planning to overturn President Bush’s directive that banned most research on embryonic stem cells.

As the bishops wrapped up their meeting, the abortion debate continues. But one thing is sure. The absolutist position, eliminating all abortions because they are considered murder, will not be realized now or later in either Canada or the United States. The gradualist position, reducing abortions as much as possible, will carry the day. It is indeed a pity that the bishops do not realize that their absolutism does not help their cause, it hinders it.

However the bishops confront him on the abortion issue, it would seem that President-elect Obama has most Americans, including Catholics, with him on his policy to reduce abortion.

A tale of two campaigns

Neil McKenty

This is being written a few days before the American election. Which gives me the perfect chance to go out on a limb. So here goes.

I assume that when you read these lines, the United States will have a new president and his name will be Barack Obama. Why did Obama win and why did John McCain lose?

The answer, in its simplest terms, is that the senator from Illinois had a plan and stuck to it. The senator from Arizona had no plan except to throw spaghetti at the ceiling to see what would stick. Not much did.

Senator McCain began by saying he would be taking the high road. He would eschew personal attacks. He would engage his opponent by arguing the substance of the issues.

The high road didn’t last long for McCain. When his campaign began to slip and slide during the summer and could get neither traction nor focus, a cry went out for help. And help came with a plane full of leftovers from the Karl Rove school of political operatives.

These are the guys and girls who specialize in the politics of personal destruction. Forget grappling with Obama on the issues. Instead, dig into Obama’s past to see what dirt comes to the surface. McCain, to his credit, refused to go after Obama about his relationship with his former minister Jeremiah Wright. But that left in play other blemishes on Obama’s record, particularly his association with a domestic terrorist named Bill Ayers.

Never mind that this was pretty far-fetched. This domestic terrorist had tossed some bombs when – get this – Obama was eight years old. Many years later Obama sat on a board with Ayers at a state university. Unfortunately for the Rovians who had taken over McCain’s campaign, polling showed that these personal attacks on Obama didn’t cut much ice with American voters.

Even on issues of substance, like taxation, McCain refused to engage his opponent. Obama cited chapter and verse to demonstrate that his tax cut would benefit 95% of the middle class. Instead of arguing the merits, McCain said his opponent was a liar, a tired old Republican refrain for any “tax and spend” Democrat.

It’s also ironic to note that McCain’s biggest splash during his campaign (the choice of the manifestly unqualified Sarah Palin) turned out to be in the end one of his biggest mistakes. By election day, some on the Palin staff were knocking others on John McCain’s staff and rumours circulated that Palin would run for the Republican nomination in 2012. A cynical choice had already become an albatross.

Against these fits and starts, with a different McCain theme almost every day, Obama’s campaign emerged from the beginning “steady as she goes.”

Obama and his staff had one paramount objective. They were determined to tie McCain as tightly to Bush as two peas in a pod.

And they succeeded mainly because they stuck to this theme day after day. Eventually the ordinary voter gave up trying to distinguish between the Republican President and the Republican senator. The sins of the one were visited on the other.

The steadiness in his campaign was mirrored in the way Obama dealt with unexpected events like the financial crisis. McCain ran around in circles – suspending his campaign, rushing to Washington, failing to get his colleagues on board – while Obama coolly waited for the facts before making a pronouncement on the crisis.

This is what eventually got through to the electorate. From the primaries through the campaign and the debates, Obama emerged as a thoughtful, eloquent, steady hand. These qualities were illustrated again in Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for VP. Biden was not a headline-grabbing choice (as Hillary would have been). Instead Biden was another steady hand, complementing and completing Obama’s own strengths.

So by the end of the campaign, the 47-year-old Obama seemed steadier, more presidential and more thoughtful than his somewhat irascible and impetuous 72-year-old opponent, and a majority of voters agreed with former Secretary of State Colin Powell that Barack Obama would make “an exceptional president.”

In conclusion I should say that if this analysis turns out to be wrong, at least I’ll have my very own “Dewey Defeats Truman” style souvenir.

Electoral showdown in Ottawa and Washington

Neil McKenty

I don’t know a single one of my friends or acquaintances who plans to vote Conservative in the federal election, now less than 10 days away. Yet polls show Stephen Harper so far ahead that there is now talk of a Tory majority.

How did Harper, who everyone agrees is a superb tactician, do it? My view is that Harper, right out of the gate, defined the central issue of the campaign. That issue is leadership. And Canadians by a country mile see Harper as a far more accomplished leader than any of his opponents.

Entering the campaign, Harper wanted to build on his leadership advantage by showing a new side. He would smother one of his main negatives: the image of him as a sinister, overly partisan operator. Ads showed a soft, caring family man and a benign and understanding human being. Never mind that Harper, the one-time Reformer, is so straight-laced, you would think he walks into the shower in a three-piece suit.

Harper’s main opponent, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, also tried to define the major issue for the campaign. First it was the tax on carbon, the Green Shift. But it never caught on. Either the Green Shift was too complex to explain, or Dion hasn’t found a formula to translate it into everyday language that his candidates can use on the doorstep.

After a couple of halting weeks, the Liberal strategists pretty well buried the carbon tax. Instead they began to showcase their team – Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, Martha Hall Findlay, and Gerard Kennedy.

The idea was to emphasize the strong Liberal team as opposed to Harper’s weak and nameless cabinet.

It might have worked but it didn’t. One reason is that the people around Dion, strong communicators and politically savvy, simply brought their leader’s weaknesses into bold relief.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve thought Stéphane Dion is a remarkable person ever since I first encountered him at a speech at Concordia during the last referendum. I further think that if he ever got the keys to 24 Sussex, he could well become a splendid prime minister. Dion is not ideologically driven and he’s as honest as the day is long. No matter. Dion, who lacks poltical street smarts, has not been able to communicate his message in either official language.

The result is that the Liberal vote has collapsed in British Columbia and there will almost certainly be significant losses in Ontario and Quebec. Only in Atlantic Canada is the Liberal vote holding.

Another problem is that, with the exception of someone like Marc Garneau, Dion has not been able to attract star candidates in Quebec or anywhere else. Nor did the debates change the momentum in any significant way.

At this stage, the prospects for the Liberals are bleak indeed. If Dion can’t hang onto the seats he has now – 95 – it is difficult to see how he can survive as leader.

The same judgement could be made about Senator John McCain in the American election. If Senator Obama loses he would almost certainly run again four years hence.

But as this is being written, about four weeks ahead of the election, it does not appear that Obama is losing. The latest ABC-Washington Post poll shows Obama nine points ahead. You have to go back to Tom Dewey’s surprising loss to Harry Truman in 1948 to find a candidate this far ahead at this stage of the election who subsequently lost.

McCain has two problems. So long as the news is about bank bailouts and a faltering economy, Obama has the advantage. In the first debate McCain needed a game changer. He didn’t get it. Obama needed a tie. And in my view he surpassed that.

McCain’s other problem is Sarah Palin. The bloom is off the rose so far as the governor of Alaska is concerned. Even conservative columnists, like David Brooks in the New York Times, complain that Palin’s answers, in the few media interviews she has done, are so incoherent and painful that he cannot bring himself to watch her anymore.

But Palin is nothing if not resilient. She smiled her way through the vice-presidential debate, answered questions when she could, ducked them when she couldn’t, and lived to campaign another day.

It will not likely be enough. The tide is moving strongly toward Obama and it is hard to say what will change it.

Biden or Palin: who's really pro-life?

Neil McKenty

When Republican nominee John McCain chose the little-known Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, 44, to be his running mate, he obviously saw three things she would bring to the ticket: she's a woman, she's young and she's pro-life.

Questions about Palin's experience, or lack of it, become more acute when you compare her to Barack Obama's choice of running mate.

There is no question that Joe Biden adds heft to the Democratic ticket. He's a Roman Catholic from a blue collar background, two constituencies in which Obama is weak. He has a solid background in foreign affairs and military policy, after six terms in the Senate, where he chairs the foreign relations committee. He recently returned from Georgia where he was consulted by the Georgian government. As the conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan put it, "he's a senator who doesn't just call foreign leaders – they call him."

The scrappy Biden will also do for Obama what James Carville did for Bill Clinton – act as an attack dog. The Globe and Mail calls his selection a sign of "a welcome determination to take the fight to the Republicans on their home turf of national security."

One element of the Obama-Biden ticket will come more to the fore now that Sarah Palin's pro-life credentials are so high-profile. Both Democrats are pro-choice, despite Biden's Catholicism. Does this mean Democrats will lose the pro-life vote? Not necessarily. Democrats have made a significant shift in their abortion policy. Besides the commitment to choice, their platform explicitly states that there should be a reduction in the number of abortions.

Obama and Biden have statistics to rally in their favour in appealing to social conservatives. For openers, most data now show the pro-choice approach to be more effective at achieving ostensibly pro-life goals: reducing both the number of late-term abortions and the number of abortions overall. Key to the issue is preventing unwanted pregnancies. Pro-choice figures like Obama are the ones who champion wider access to birth control, and it's been pro-choice elected officials who've fought for insurance coverage of the procedure and the introduction of new and more effective contraceptives. Only 11% of sexually active American women forego contraception, and this 11% account for half of the abortions in the US. Obama and Biden support the comprehensive sex-ed programs that have been proven to work. McCain and Palin support no-sex-until-marriage programs which have been proven to fail.

Abortion won't be the major issue in November, the economy will. But Obama and Biden will need votes wherever they can get them, and the pro-life faction may take another look at the Democratic ticket if they realize it's the real pro-life ticket.

Obama or McCain: who’s best for Canada?

Neil McKenty

If Canadians were allowed to vote in the American election the result would be a landslide.  According to a Harris-Decima poll, 55 per cent would vote for Barack Obama, only 15 per cent for John McCain.

At first glance, this seems curious. On the one issue that makes many Canadians nervous, Obama is on the wrong side. The issue is the free trade agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and the junior Senator from Illinois has threatened to tear it up. Subsequently Obama has backed off from his tough talk, telling Fortune magazine that some of his trade rhetoric was “overheated and amplified.”

But John McCain’s record in favour of free trade is not something he contrived for the campaign; he’s always held that view.  When he addressed the Economic Club of Canada recently in Ottawa, the Senator from Arizona attacked Obama’s position: “Demanding unilateral changes and threatening to abrogate an agreemement that has increased trade and prosperity is nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls.”

Almost all Canadians would agree with McCain’s views on trade. So why would almost all Canadians refuse to vote for him even if they could? For one thing, McCain seems to have espoused “voodoo economics” which the current president’s father once accused Ronald Reagan of peddling.  At the same time as McCain wants to increase the size of the armed forces and spend billions to modernize their weaponry, he is also promising to cut taxes – a surefire recipe for more deficits.

McCain’s tax policy illustrates another McCain trait – his ability to flipflop. He opposed the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 arguing rightly that they would lead to deficits and were tilted toward the rich. His fellow Republicans attacked him for this so he caved in and now favours making those cuts permanent – and adding to them.

How does McCain propose to spend more and cut taxes at the same time? He says he will do it by cutting “earmarks,” those items of pork that US legislators add to money bills. But they amount to a tiny proportion of federal spending.

Even if McCain’s economic policies made more sense, he would have a hard time. After eight years of Bush lying the country into war and tapping his countrymen’s telephones illegally, 2008 looks like a Democratic year. And the party has nominated a candidate who has the wind in his sails.

Obama is the most engaging and attractive candidate nominated by either party in my lifetime. He epitomizes the multiculturalism so valued by Canadians. As John Ibbitson writes in the Globe and Mail, Americans are thinking seriously about electing a Kenyan-American who has an Indonesian-American half-sister who is herself married to a Chinese-Canadian doctor. So Obama has a Canadian connection.

Perhaps at an intuitive level Canadians understand that the United States (and Canada) need Obama. Recent polling shows that 80 per cent of Americans believe their country is headed in the wrong direction, a higher number than at any time since polling began.

Whether or not Canadians grasp the specifics of Mr. Obama’s platform, they seem emphatically to buy his message of hope and change.

And so do I, especially after I heard Obama deliver his message at an historic unity meeting in the village of Unity (population 1707), New Hampshire, by the Vermont border.

After driving from Montreal, my friend Jim and I got into the unity rally, where a crowd of 5,000 on a hot sunny day enthusiastically waited the arrival of Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.

They did not disappoint. Senator Clinton promised that she would help Obama and the Democratic ticket in any way she could. Some of her female supporters, seated around us, nodded their heads when she urged them to back Obama and forget any foolish notion of fleeing to Senator McCain.

Senator Obama reciprocated by assuring the former first lady how much he needed her help and that of her husband too. As the two leading Democrats embraced each other and raised their clasped hands high, the crowd went wild. Their party is now solidly united for change.

There was only one incident that left a bad taste in the mouth. A few yards from where we were sitting, a minor disturbance broke out. I looked around and saw a state trooper hustling away a fiftyish man wearing a National Rifle Association T-shirt. That didn’t bother me but the expression on the man’s face did. It was a narrow face, lips compressed and red with anger. A face to raise apprehension.

After the speeches I got myself down to the rope line and managed to shake hands with Barack Obama. His handshake was firm, his hands rough.

It was a satisfying way to end a splendid day.

Liberal leader Dion and the carbon tax

Neil McKenty

There must be a federal election by October 2009, or sooner if the Harper government falls on a confidence motion in the Commons.

In most Canadian federal elections there is no big issue. The major parties dive for the centre ground, leaving not much substantive difference between party platforms. Canadian voters, I would guess, make their decision on what they think of the leaders. Are they trustworthy, fair, competent, comfortable in their skins? Charisma is not a factor in current federal elections because no leader has much of it.

There hasn’t been a big issue in a federal contest since the Free Trade election of 1988. Could the next federal election be decided on a big issue?

It might well be. The issue currently being weighed on its pros and cons in party backrooms is the carbon tax.

The rationale behind a carbon tax is quite straight­forward: that we should tax less the things we want more of (work, savings, and investments) and tax more the things we want less of (pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, smog and waste). The intention of a carbon tax is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and slow global warming. Such a tax can be implemented by taxing the burning of fossil fuels – coal and petroleum products such as gasoline, aviation fuel and natural gas – in proportion to their carbon content.

This direct taxation is transparent. It can be popular with the public if it’s revenue-neutral – in other words, if the revenue from the carbon tax is returned to voters by reducing other taxes.

Could this be the defining issue that decides the next election? Indeed it could. And the man who is thinking of putting a carbon tax at the centre of his platform is Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.

Recently Dion ran the carbon tax up the flagpole for a Toronto business audience. “I’m prepared to fight an election on a richer, greener, fairer Canada, and I’ve said that for the last two years.”

Harper’s Conservatives are equally prepared to fight an election against the tax because they claim it would hurt our economy.

Other critics of the plan, including those in Dion’s own party who are nervous about any tax hike, especially on gasoline, say the proposed tax – to be officially unveiled next month – is confusing, expensive, and politically risky because many voters will see it as a money grab.

But Dion responds that his new tax, estimated to raise about $16 billion, will be revenue-neutral. “What can be clearer? We need to make polluters pay and put every single penny back into the hands of Canadians through the right tax cuts.”

Dion said jurisdictions like British Columbia, which will bring in the first carbon tax in North America this summer, have taken the lead in a movement he hopes will “sweep the nation.”

The latest polls show that 72 per cent of Canadians would support some form of carbon tax.

The Liberal leader also praised Quebec, which imposed a carbon-based tax last fall that pumps revenues back into programs supporting green technology.

The bigger fear among his own caucus members is that Mr. Dion, who at the best of times is not a great communicator in either official language, will be unable to sell his idea in 30 seconds at the door during an election campaign. One caucus member put the problem this way: “Voters do not want to hear how to build a watch, they just want to know the time.”

But the Liberal leader is planning his carbon campaign carefully. He has already dispatched 30-year-old rookie Ontario MP Navdeep Bains to sell the idea over this summer to young people.

One of his staff members, Nick Gzowski – son of the late broadcaster Peter Gzowski – has produced a TV ad about climate change inspired by the Make Poverty History campaign, in which film stars are seen snapping their fingers. In the carbon ad, Liberal MPs are featured clapping. Dion says, “We’re up to the challenge... Are you?”

There’s no question that Dion and the Liberals are playing a high-risk game. There’s also no question that a bold pol­icy to improve the environment and become a world leader in climate change could well engage the imagination of the Canadian voter, and be a political winner to boot.

It depends whether the Liberal leader can clearly explain the time, and not get bogged down trying to build a watch.

Navigating life with the right map

Neil McKenty

One day on my radio phone-in show the question was, “How do you get on with your mate driving the car?” Most of the callers, especially the women, recalled incidents where their husbands got lost. The reaction was always the same. First the husband denied he was lost, then he refused to stop the car and ask for directions and finally, in a fit of pique, he angrily refused to look at a map.

That radio program got me thinking about maps. Of course, if you’re lost it’s stupid not to consult a map and figure out where you are. But suppose you don’t have a map. Or even worse, you have the wrong map.

For example, you live in Montreal and for the first time you are motoring to Boston. You get to Boston alright, then the whole trip begins to unravel. You can’t find your hotel. You can’t even find the name of the street your hotel is on. You pore over your map. None of it makes any sense.

Finally, you see a policeman. You stop and show him your map. He looks at you quizzically. He says it’s no wonder you’re lost. You’ve been driving frantically around Boston using the map of Detroit.

But isn’t that how some people go through life, following the wrong map? Is it any wonder that so many are anxious, bewildered, angry and ultimately lost? Of course, now we're talking about an interior map, a map that somehow relates to the landscape of our own psyche. So where do we get this inaccurate, defective map that has led us down so many blind alleys? I think the answer is that we get this map from other people. Perhaps our parents gave us a map that applies more to their needs than to ours. Or we spend a lot of energy trying to live up to the expectations (the maps) of other people.

At the core of the problem is an instinctive sense that we are not being true to ourselves, that we are not living out our natural bent, nor, in the words of Joseph Campbell “following our bliss.” Instead our lives are still governed by external expectations — by these maps drawn by other people.

Think of the tortuous journey of a man who wants to be a writer but instead, living up to his family’s aspirations, has become a priest. Or a woman who wants to be an artist but finds herself doing a degree in bioethics because that’s what her father, an eminent doctor, wanted her to do.

I think the word “hypocrite” is relevant here, not in a moral sense, but from the Greek root meaning “actor”. It’s a dreadful burden to go through life being an actor, following the wrong map.

So how does a person develop his or her own map for the journey? My own experience is that a crisis of some sort may be required to get us on the road to existential honesty. Some of us must hit what AA calls an “emotional bottom” wherein we realize that (with the wrong map) we are powerless, that our lives have become unmanageable and we must reach out for help. It is in this “bottom” that I believe we take the first decisive step in beginning to draw our own map.

It is a marvellous paradox that when we become vulnerable we also become able to grow from the inside. In that sense, God does indeed write straight with crooked lines. Or as the Canadian therapist Marian Woodman puts it, “God comes through the wound.”

There's a type of litmus test to tell whether one lives by one's own map. First, a friend telephones and ask you to a party. You say you’ll get back to her. The reason for your delay is not to consult your agenda. The real reason is that you don’t want to commit yourself in case another more interesting invitation might turn up. Only those who habitually live outside of their own maps are mature enough not to continually hedge their bets but to move in a straight line. Another friend invites you to take on a project. You hesitantly say yes not because the project interests you but because you don’t want to offend your friend. You're not living on your own map. Only those who do so are comfortable saying no when it is the mature response. How and why a person says no says a lot.

Drawing your own maps is not a decision nor an act of will. It's a process which requires awareness, demands patience and is truly liberating.

Blessings on your journey.

Hillary jeopardizes Democratic win

Neil McKenty

It is remarkable that the two candidates running for the Democratic nomination are so strong they risk weakening their own party. Imagine another three months of trench warfare between Senators Clinton and Obama. The collateral damage for the Democratic party is that this slugfest can only help Senator McCain now and in the general election next fall.

Because she is behind in so many categories – elected delegates, popular vote, states won – the New York Times has concluded Mrs. Clinton has no more than a five per cent chance of winning the nomination at the convention in Denver next summer.

So is it any wonder calls are increasing that Clinton should sit down, review her situation and bow out. Among others, the distinguished Democratic Senator Leahy from Vermont has urged her to do just that.

But Senator Clinton, displaying uncommon energy, resiliency and resolve, has made it clear she is staying the course at least until the primaries are over in early June. Even her critics admit she has every right to do so.

So what would it take for Senator Clinton to win? For starters, she would have to pull ahead in the popular vote to balance her second-place spot in number of states won and in pledged delegates. Unfortunately for Clinton, almost nobody who has done the math thinks that she can win the popular vote without re-votes in Florida and Michigan.

Mrs. Clinton is more than 700,000 votes behind in the popular vote. With 10 states and territories still to vote (including Pennsylvania which she will almost certainly win), perhaps another six million votes could be cast if turnout is very high.

To get the lead in the popular vote, she would need to win 56 percent of all the remaining votes – or well more than 60 percent of the votes outside of North Carolina and other states she is expected to lose. So far, though, Mrs. Clinton hasn’t won 60 per cent in any state except Arkansas, where she had reigned as first lady.

So any way you slice it, Mrs. Clinton’s chances of winning the popular vote are negligible. And without the popular vote, she is toast. In view of that bleak prospect why does Mrs. Clinton stubbornly insist on soldiering on? Her own people say she’s not a quitter and she will hang in right through the convention. Her critics are not so kind. Some say her real strategy is to destroy Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the general election so that she can compete again in 2012.

Meanwhile, the big winner of this Democratic fist-fighting is Senator McCain. A recent Gallup poll found that 19 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. McCain in the general election if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee. More startling, 28 percent of Mrs.Clinton’s supporters said they would defect to Mr. McCain if Senator Obama were the nominee.

In addition, each Democratic candidate is inflicting wounds on the other, wounds the Republicans will rip the scabs off come the general election next fall. Mrs. Clinton says she would have walked out of Obama’s church given the hateful comments of his minister. She also said both she and Senator McCain are qualified to be commander in chief, pointedly omitting Senator Obama. The Obama campaign underlined Mrs. Clinton’s big fib about fleeing sniper fire in Bosnia.

Granted, tempers may cool by November. But dragging out the contest only deepens wounds and reduces time for healing. In nine of the last 10 presidential elections, the nominee chosen first ended up winning the general election. And if the Democratic nominee has been crippled, that would hurt Democrats running for other offices as well. When Mrs. Clinton goes down to defeat how many of her Democratic friends will she take with her?

I freely confess that up until the beginning of this year I supported Hillary Clinton for president. And, if despite all the odds, she is still selected and elected, I think she would make a good president. But I have now concluded that Senator Obama might make a great one. His speech on race relations was the best since Bobby Kennedy in 1968. He has special appeal for young people. He would put a new face on America in the world of nations.

Hillary has waged a gallant campaign. She could have a brilliant future in the Senate. But I believe the time has come, for the sake of her party and for her own sake, for Hillary to gracefully bow out.