Obama Victory
No mandate for cultural revolution
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, November 14, 2008


ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch  
Publication Date: November 13, 2008

It is often said that America is a center-right country when it comes to social issues. But after Sen. Barack Obama's impressive electoral victory, some pundits say we are witnessing a "lurch to the left" on such issues as abortion, gay marriage and judicial activism.

Their claims of a new cultural mandate are based on the results of last week's election. And as even the most sunny-eyed social conservative must concede, those results came as a blow, particularly to the pro-life movement.

Anti-abortion measures put before voters in California, Colorado and South Dakota all failed. Washington state voters joined Oregon in legalizing assisted suicide. There no longer are any pro-life women in the U.S. Senate. And Obama's stated plans to sign the Freedom of Choice Act — which would eliminate virtually all federal, state and local restrictions on abortion — and to appoint Supreme Court judges who will uphold Roe v. Wade will be easy for him to fulfill, given the pro-choice congressional majority.

Still, the reports of social conservatism's demise are greatly exaggerated. For starters, two of the three state anti-abortion measures that failed did not receive the support of major pro-life players in their states because they were perceived as deeply flawed. Republicans sustained significant losses in Congress, but the number of congressional Democrats elected on pro-life platforms increased for the second time in two years.

As for the presidential race, Sen. John McCain was not exactly a conservative darling. His support for embryonic stem-cell research and opposition to a federal marriage amendment made him a less than ideal standard-bearer for the pro-life and pro-family causes. And his recent proposal for the federal government to buy up America's bad mortgages inspired little confidence among fiscal conservatives.

McCain clearly is more socially conservative than Obama. But it is noteworthy that in their match-up, Obama mostly played defense on social issues. He repeatedly distanced himself from his socially liberal record by stressing his desire to find "common ground" on abortion, hedging on earlier pronouncements about a pro-Roe litmus test for judges and reminding voters that he opposes gay marriage.

Obama's fans on the hard left are trumpeting his victory as the definitive triumph of social liberalism in America. But exit polls paint a more mundane picture of an electorate overwhelmingly focused on economic issues. Although voters in 2004 cited "moral values" as their top concern and re-elected socially conservative President George W. Bush as a result, voters in 2008 cited the economy and opted for Obama, who campaigned as an economic change agent. Obama's decision to play up pocketbook issues instead of social ones reflects his understanding of an electoral reality that eludes many of his left-wing supporters: When contentious social issues dominate an American presidential campaign, liberals lose.

Few social issues are more contentious than the definition of marriage, and on this score, conservatives won big last week. Voters in Florida, Arizona and California approved gay-marriage bans, bringing the number of states with such bans to 30. The California victory was particularly impressive because it happened in a solidly blue state where voters supported Obama by double-digit margins. In backing the time-honored understanding of marriage and thereby affirming every child's right to a mother and a father, California voters proved that defending marriage is a bipartisan priority.

Obama should keep those voters in mind in the coming months. Although he ran as a post-partisan conciliator, he will be pressured by his party's fringe to govern as a left-wing culture warrior. If Obama truly wants to unite America and prove his skeptics wrong, he can begin by keeping his campaign promise to seek common ground on the issues that divide us most.

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.