Inside Politics

Luring Catholics

“You are the Democratic candidate for president. You want to reach out to Catholics. So what do you do when the majority of the elected officials on your National Catholic Advisory Council have the seal of approval from NARAL Pro-Choice America?” Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn asks.

“That’s the position Barack Obama now finds himself in. A few months ago, his Catholic advisory council was announced with great enthusiasm, and Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) was listed as a national co-chair. His appearance at the top of the council sent a clear message: This campaign is determined to recover some of the lost Democratic sheep who have gravitated to the GOP over abortion,” Mr. McGurn said.

“This council does indeed include some Catholics whose pro-life credentials are impeccable, including Minnesota <Congressman James Oberstar. But let us also stipulate the obvious: Of the 21 senators, congressmen and governors listed on the council’s National Leadership Committee, 17 have a 90 percent-100 percent NARAL approval rating. Even Mr. Casey now enjoys a 65 percent NARAL approval rating.

“It’s not as if these NARAL scores are outliers: Sen. Obama himself boasts a 100 percent NARAL rating, and for good reason. In a speech before Planned Parenthood, he declared that the right to an abortion is at stake in this election, and vowed that he would not yield on appointing judges that would uphold Roe v. Wade.

“Mr. Obama is for using tax dollars to fund abortions, and against restrictions on partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, he voted against legislation protecting a child who was born alive despite an abortion. In sum, if you want to know what Mr. Obama’s policies mean, it’s this: taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.”

In denial

“The whole [Iraq] episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others,” New York Times columnist David Brookscq writes.

“The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home,” Mr. Brooks says.

“But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

“Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.”

Bad ideas

“Here we go again. Soaring oil prices have sent Washington politicians into overdrive to come up with a variety of legislative plans that aim to lower the cost of energy by targeting oil companies,” Jacob Heilbrunn writes in the Los Angeles Times.

“Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, for example, has declared: ’I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.’ It may sound good in theory, but if history is any guide, this is a pipe dream. The real danger isn’t that Congress will do too little, but too much,” Mr. Heilbrunn says.

“The recent past suggests that, in fact, efforts to influence the supply of energy can actually boomerang, driving up prices and consumption. Rather than demonize Big Oil, lawmakers should focus on tamping down demand.

“Washington’s record when it comes to forcing oil prices down by trying to manipulate the supply of energy is dismal,” he said, citing Richard Nixon’s domestic price controls and Jimmy Carter’s windfall profits tax, both of which made the United States more, not less, dependent on Arab oil-producing countries.

Korea’s beef

“The high-class explanation for the South Korean riots against U.S. beef is protectionism. The low-class explanation is anti-Americanism,” Froma Harrop writes in the Providence (R.I.) Journal.

But a third view that South Koreans are justified in slamming the safety of American beef — has no class at all. That educated people subscribe to such libel does not dignify it,” the writer said.

“Let’s back up.

“South Korea once was the third-biggest foreign market for U.S. beef. After a single American cow was found infected with mad-cow disease in 2003, it banned all American beef. The embargo was partly lifted in 2006 but clanked down again last October after bone chips were found in three shipments. (They are not supposed to be there, but pose virtually no danger to consumers.)

“Americans negotiating a free-trade agreement with South Korea had been demanding a fully open market for U.S. beef. When South Korea agreed to that in April, the streets of Seoul erupted in violent protests against ’unsafe’ American beef.

“With 80,000 rioters going crazy and venting their rage also at him, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak apologized to his people for accepting the deal. He then asked Washington to limit U.S. beef exports to meat from cows no older than 30 months.

“Why 30 months? No logical reason. It’s understood that mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) occurs mainly in older animals. But 30 months has become ’a magic number with no specific scientific validation,’ Dean Cliver, professor emeritus of food safety at the University of California-Davis, told me.”

Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.