I havent read the full speech yet but a few things strike me right off the bat about Obama’s big faith-based partnership initiative he’s announcing today. Because his campaign ads have tended to emphasize his efforts for layed off workers, it obscures this basic fact: most of his work was with and through churches. Barack Obama’s job for several years was creating faith-based partnerships. His understanding of the interplay between churches and social services is likely more nuanced than any candidate in history.

I’m looking forward to seeing the whole speech so we can see whether his plan reflects any special subtlety.
Politically, this operates on several levels. As has been much noted of late, he’s making a major play for evangelicals. This will help. But the political richness of this goes beyond that direct play for evangelicals.
First, many forget that the main political targets of Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” (the centerpiece of which was his faith-based program) was not evangelicals but centrist Catholics. This appeals to both Obamagelicals and Catholics.
Second, if he’s lucky, Obama will be criticized from some on the secular left for his approach, providing him a low-cost way of showing himself not to be a standard-issue liberal (whatever that means these days).
Third, faith is his way of countering the charges of elitism. His faithyness helps him establish a connection to middle America that he sure wont achieve through his bowling prowess or taste for arugula. He cant bowl, but he sure can pray. And since the stereotype is that Harvard elitists are irreligious, if Obama is faithy, he wont seem as elitist.