A few days after Senator Barack Obama met inconspicuously
with Rev. Billy Graham’s son, one of the most prominent names of the
evangelical movement, and other religious leaders, James C. Dobson, went at Obama, accusing him of having “a fruitcake interpretation of the
Constitution” and distorting the meaning of both the Old and New Testaments.
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional
understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused
theology,” Dobson said Tuesday in one of the regular radio broadcasts for the
group he leads, Focus on the Family, as quoted by The New York Times.
Dobson’s remarks come as a feedback to a June 28, 2006,
speech in which Mr. Obama, in Washington,
mentioned Bible passages that he suggested were in conflict with present-day
practices. Dobson came forward with critiques immediately after Joshua Dubois,
the Obama campaign’s religious affairs director, offered to meet with Focus on
the Family leaders and insinuated to some people that Dobson was concerned
about Obama’s readiness to compete with Republicans for the evangelical vote.
Also, Dobson objected to Obama’s view of the Constitution when
speaking about abortion. As a response to Obama’s support for abortion rights,
Dobson said about the Democratic Senator that he wants “to go to the lowest
common denominator of morality.” Irritation reached a distinct point on
Dobson’s scale when, in his speech, Obama paired him with Rev. Al Sharpton as
an example of religious leaders having contradictory points of view. Dobson’s
reaction was to qualify the comparison extremist, ”offensive.”
Barack Obama responded, on Tuesday, during an informal
session with reporters aboard a flight from Las Vegas
to Los Angeles,
that anyone writing about the dispute should read his entire speech first and
accused Focus on the Family leader of twisting the speech on religion he gave
in 2006. “Any notion that I was distorting the Bible in that speech, I think
would be — someone would be pretty hard pressed to make that argument,” Obama
said.
On the same media session, Barack Obama said Charlie Black
was wrong to say that a terrorist attack would help John McCain in November and
that he spoke to Hillary Clinton today and is trying to reach out to her
husband.
After inquiring about basketball, gambling, and the trifles
from voters he carries with him, reporters pressed him on the issue of whether
he has spoken with the ex-president who so often minimized him along the
campaign. “I’m sure we will. He’s in Europe
right now which is the only reason we haven’t spoken. But were looking forward
to setting up a long conversation,” responded Obama as quoted by Fox News. The
Senator acclaimed the former president as a great strategist. However, Clinton’s commitment to joining
Obama’s campaign has come into question in such a matter that a representative
for the ex-president had to release a statement reaffirming his support for the
Illinois Senator.
As for the now-infamous Charlie Black quote, Obama qualified the argument
that a future terrorist attack helps McCain as truly not correct. Asked whether
Black should be fired, Obama said that is for McCain to decide.
