Barack Obama

Obamakis and Bidenopoulos

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Political candidates follow a time-honored campaign strategy of reaching out to ethnic groups and religious communities, and Orthodox Christians have been courted this way for years. It works both ways, of course. Now, little more than a week after the election, we’re getting a good look at how politicians and political operatives of Greek descent — many of them prominent in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese — have been working for years to promote President-elect Barack Obama and running mate Sen. Joseph Biden. The Greeks for Obama group, for example, developed this catchy slogan: “If you are Greek and love Obama, clap your hands.”

Opa! Obama!

On Nov. 5, the National Coordinated Effort of Hellenes told supporters that it had raised $500,000 for Obama’s campaign just weeks before the election. (full message appended at bottom of post). Andy Manatos, a public relations executive who also chaired last summer’s GOA Clergy-Laity Congress, led the effort for this group. “Moving the huge American bureaucracy to treat Greece, Cyprus and the Ecumenical Patriarchate fairly is never easy in light of competing American interests,” Manatos said. “However, having Obamakis and Bidenopoulos in the White House opens the door to some good possibilities.”

The blowback came pretty fast. Earlier this week, Greek News reported that the “Obamakis and Bidenopoulos” statement received an angry reaction from “almost every one of the community leaders that participate in the Coordinated Effort.” But, of course, that was more a question of how the press release was handled rather than the facts surrounding the “Coordinated Effort.”

Yes, those “competing American interests” that Manatos referred to after the election. Those would be the interests that are of great importance to the United States, and not necessarily to the nation of Greece. But if you read the statements of Obama’s ethnic Greek supporters, you get a sense that any American interests have been pushed completely out of sight. The focus is for the most part is on three issues: Cyprus, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Macedonia/FYROM naming issue.
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Obama Defeats ‘Social Darwinists’?

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Update (11/19/08) — In “Bush’s record in Africa receives well-deserved praise,” USA Today’s DeWayne Wickham gives us this:

This year, Bush signed a bill that authorized up to $48 billion to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — most of it to be spent in sub-Saharan Africa — from 2009 through 2013. Since 2003, the Bush administration has provided funding to increase the number of Africans receiving anti-retroviral drugs from 50,000 to about 1.4 million, Frazer said.

— End update —

Bishop Savas of Troas

Did God ordain an Obama victory? You get that impression from Sava on a Rolla, the blog of Bishop Savas of Troas. In a post titled, “This is the Day that the Lord has made!,” the chancellor of the Greek Archdiocese celebrates the victory of President-elect Barack Obama in terms that can only be described as divine:

Do I expect miracles from the President-Elect? Am I confusing the man with the Messiah? Of course not. But neither is he the Antichrist, as some of his opponents would have you believe. Americans did a good thing yesterday, an inspired thing. They didn’t voice their opinion, they shouted it. A new day has dawned, a day that the Lord has most emphatically made. Are you as delighted as I am? Send up thanks to the Lord our God! Are you for any reason unhappy? Pray to the same God for our President-Elect’s enlightenment.

I don’t know. It’s almost like reading the Genesis account of Creation. OK, the Bishop’s guy won, and he has every right to celebrate. Then he goes — to put it nicely — really over the top.

The goal of government ought not to be to protect us from one another, to teach us to treat the other as competition or nuisance or threat, but to help us to help one another.

Could the Bishop be talking about those American citizens, many of whom were Orthodox Christians, who voted for John McCain? Or other Republican candidates? Or for President George W. Bush during his two terms? He doesn’t say so, but something here leads me to believe that the Bishop is doing just that.

Actually, one of the fundamental goals of government is to protect us from those who would do us harm, whether they live down the street or in another part of the globe. Read the newspaper on any given day, and you’ll see why this is so. And let’s take it a step further. As the American Founders foresaw, with God-enlightened genius, one of the main roles of government is to protect us from bad government and bad rulers

Finally, Bishop Savas tips his hand with this parenthetical dig:
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In the Wake of the Election

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Whether your guy won or lost on Tuesday (mine came in second) you have to marvel at this very exceptional nation called America. And, indeed, the whole world is doing just that. In an editorial, the Times of London described the election as a “Masterclass in Democracy”:

The world has been fascinated and profoundly moved by this election most of all because of what America is — a nation founded on universal aspirations, and thus a mirror to humanity. For two centuries that mirror has seemed irreparably cracked by the legacy of slavery and segregation, a pernicious and enduring racism that remains a factor in the blighted lives of so many of the poor blacks among whom Mr Obama launched his political career. He is not the last role model they will ever need, but he is the most powerful proof his country has produced that it is ready to judge them by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.

The world watched as 121 million Americans peacefully went to the polls and democratically elected a new leader in Barack Obama. John McCain conceded to Obama in a speech that the Telegraph described as one of “striking grace and generosity.” He will succeed President George W. Bush who immediately and graciously promised a smooth transition.

In his acceptance speech in Chicago, Obama talked about the “values” we share:

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

Of course, as Christians, we are more concerned — or should be — about illumination by the Truth than we are about any competition of “values.” Even atheists have values, don’t they? In the coming weeks and months, we shall have hard evidence about how Obama plans to “heal the divides.”
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