The Obama Obsession

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 27 Comments

Da Tech Guy’s habit of watching Morning Joe on MSNBC, to get a daily read on what liberals are thinking, is a habit I’ve started to adopt. It’s interesting to watch the Obama-centric worldview in action.

Today, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinsksi spent a full ten minutes discussing with Savannah Guthrie and Evan Wolfson this Pew Poll that shows 18% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. This evidently loomed large in their minds, and at one point Scarborough made reference to the president’s “critics,” as if these unnamed critics were somehow responsible for this perception.

My Republican consultant friend Ali Akbar — who is, in fact, a Southern Baptist from Texas — could probably explain to Joe and Mika that a certain percentage of the public automatically thinks “Muslim” when it hears a name like Barack Hussein Obama. One need not conjure up “critics” to make this phenomenon understandable.

The MSNBC crew, however, evidently consider it their job to superintend Obama’s public image, and so a thick slice of their morning was spent obsessing over this Pew Poll result. And when we learn that this pushback against the Pew Poll is being orchestrated by the White House press shop, we see how Joe and Mika are required to function as administration mouthpieces.

If all you knew about this poll was what you saw on MSNBC, however, you might have missed other results of the Pew Poll. Fortunately, we have Yid With Lid to point out this important finding:

[T]here is widespread agreement that politicians should be religious. Fully 61% say that is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs; just 34% disagree.
Majorities across all major religious groups – with the exception of the religiously unaffiliated – agree it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs. More than eight-in-ten white evangelical Protestants (83%) express this view, as do roughly two-thirds of white non-Hispanic Catholics (66%) and white mainline Protestants (64%). And about seven-in-ten black Protestants (71%) say it is important that lawmakers have strong religious beliefs.

While Joe and Mika were obsessing over Obama’s image problems, they neglected to discuss this: For most Americans, religion is not about identity politics, it’s about having a firm system of morality — a bedrock sense of right and wrong, good and evil. People quite naturally want their political leaders to possess the kind of deep faith that inspires virtue.

Outside the secularized world of the media elite, religion is still viewed as a good thing, and the people want their leaders to be religious.

In other words: Good news!

Too bad Joe and Mika missed that.

UPDATE: Citing a Byron York column, Professor Glenn Reynolds observes: “Obama famously described himself as a blank screen onto which others projected their impressions. This worked for him for a long time. Now, it’s working against him.”

UPDATE II: Brandon Kiser on the “guilty pleasure” of watching Morning Joe: