Obama’s administration is one thing in news commentaries and press releases. It will be quite another in history books.
Here are 10 Obama presidential “firsts” and suggestions of how they might define him.
A War President
1. He is the first U.S. President whose military plans provoked a Pope to call for a worldwide day of prayer and fasting for peace.
2. Heck, he is the First Nobel Peace Prize winner to draw peace activists of all kinds to protest his foreign policy at his house.
An Anti-Religion President
3. He is the first president to promote a major change to public morals opposed by every major religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism all define marriage as the union of a man and woman. Obama doesn’t.
4. He is also the first president to demand that a major religious group fund practices that it considers intrinsically evil, in this case demanding that Catholics fund contraceptives and abortifacients in the original HHS Mandate.
5. He is the first President to forbid military chaplains to accurately pass on their church’s teaching (regarding the HHS Mandate).
6. And he is also the first to ban military chaplains from saying Mass — even as volunteers (in the government shutdown).
A One-Party President
7. He is the first president to enact major social legislation (which brought us the HHS mandate) without a single vote from outside his party.
8. That social legislation, Obamacare, made him the first president to shut down the Lincoln Memorial and other national parks rather than negotiate with members of the other party.
The Abortion President
9. Not only is Obama the first president to have voted to deny rights to infants after they are born (yes, he really did), but he is the first president to provide taxpayer-funded abortions to federal employees.
The Redeemed President?
10. But he still has time. Just as he blinked on Syria, and backed off of his firm plans, he could do the same in other matters as well. What if he decided to work with both parties? What if he accepted the advice of the bumper-sticker and decided to “Coexist” with the beliefs of Martin Luther King Jr. and other religious people on marriage? What if he gave military Catholics freedom of worship and civilian Catholics freedom of conscience? What if he ratified the Declaration of Independence’s insistence on the right to life?
Alas, such a significant change in course would be another first. But we pray for peace … so why not pray for that?