{"id":497,"date":"2008-04-08T00:19:32","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T00:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/qa-with-bob-casey-jr-obama-and.html"},"modified":"2008-04-08T00:19:32","modified_gmt":"2008-04-08T00:19:32","slug":"qa-with-bob-casey-jr-obama-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/qa-with-bob-casey-jr-obama-and.html","title":{"rendered":"Q&A With Bob Casey, Jr: Obama and Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"obamacasey.jpg\"Senator Bob Casey, Jr., a Catholic, pro-life Democrat, recently became Barack Obama’s highest-profile backer in the Pennsylvania<\/a>, which holds its primary later this month. God-o-Meter interviewed Casey on Monday afternoon about Obama’s struggles to win Catholic voters, how to use Scripture to articulate political positions, and the role of the Clintons in denying Casey’s dad a speaking role at the ’92 Democratic convention.
\nHow important will Catholics be in determining the winner of Pennsylvania\u2019s Democratic primary this month?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know the exact percentage, but it\u2019s a sizeable percentage of the Democratic primary\u2014maybe as much as 40-percent or more. It\u2019s a huge number of voters. But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a block. Catholics are every bit as diverse as any other sort of voters out there, with conservative Democrats and moderates. So often generalizations don\u2019t apply to Catholic voters. Catholics are concerned about the war, the economy, about issues like abortion, issues pertaining to the budget and funding Medicaid and Medicare and what happens to the environment.
\nIt\u2019s interesting that in this primary, both candidates throughout the campaign have talked about their own faith and the way their faith guides part of their life. It\u2019s rather unique for Democrats to be addressing questions of faith and values in such a direct way. For years the national party, their standard procedure was \u2018don\u2019t talk about and it.\u2019 Now Democrats are not just talking about their faith but listening to other people that might be of other faiths, listening to their point of view\u2026 at the national level, there used to be some\u2014hostility is the only word that described the party\u2019s discussion about faith and values, and I think that\u2019s passed.
\nYour father, then-Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey, was famously denied a speaking role at the 1992 Democratic National Conventional because of his pro-life views. Was that the embodiment of the party\u2019s hostility toward faith and values?<\/strong>
\nAt the time, it was certainly an example of that. It is still referred to as an example of how a political party at the national level was far too hostile to the point of view of a two-term governor. The party learned from that. It was not only the wrong thing to do, but there were other ways to handle it.
\nBill Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president in 1992. Do you blame him for the way the convention was handled?<\/strong>
\nI think you can probably unearth how that exactly came about but it was a strategic or at least a tactical blunder that caused a lot of Democrats to be pretty angry for a long time. President Clinton has addressed it in his book My Life<\/em> and he understood at the time the seriousness of it and I have no reason to doubt what he wrote in his book.
\nBut when I made the decision about [endorsing] Obama it really was about him and about the future\u2026. it was not a question of saying I\u2019m rejecting one side in order to help the other.
\nObama announced on Friday that he\u2019d participate in a \u201ccompassion forum\u201d in Pennsylvania next weekend sponsored by the progressive religious group Faith in Public Life. Did you have a hand in that?<\/strong>
\nI suggested that he go. I don\u2019t profess that that\u2019s the reason he\u2019s going, but [the Obama campaign] asked our advice on a number of things and you try to give it and you always have to do it with a certain amount of humility\u2026. As recently as ten years ago, Democrats running for president might not have gone to something like that. It\u2019s a very positive development.
\nThis is the second Democratic faith forum of the \u201908 campaign. How do you respond to Democrats who say Democrats have gone too far in giving public testimony about their faith to prove that they\u2019re true believers?<\/strong>
\nThere\u2019s no question that a public official of either party can take it too far, and it\u2019s up to the candidate to be able to strike that balance, the balance that is the separation of church and state. The way I\u2019ve always looked at this is that every candidate has a right to talk as much or as little about their faith as they deem appropriate. Another guideline for me is that your faith can inspire and inform and sometimes enrich your public policy points of view and how you vote on a particular piece of legislation, but it should not dictate that [point of view]\u2026 there are some people who think that it should be dictated and I happen not to accept that way of making public policy.
\nThere was a lot of footage of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on TV the last few days, marking the 40th anniversary of his assassination, and it didn\u2019t seem like the line between faith informing his positions and dictating them was one that he acknowledged.<\/strong>
\nI do think there\u2019s a difference between what a religious leader says and does and what a public official or legislator does. But there\u2019s no question that a lot of our legal underpinnings find a good bit of their foundations in the Scriptures. Sometimes I as a public official turn to Scripture or hymns\u2014especially hymns, because sometimes we Catholics don\u2019t have the Scriptures memorized like we should\u2014to help me explain a public policy position or an idea or to be able to articulate it better when you\u2019re talking about justice or mercy or compassion. I use it more as a way to explain public policy than to say that the literal teaching of the Scriptures tells me which positions to take, which I think takes it too far. But there are plenty of people who disagree with that.
\nHillary Clinton won Catholics almost two-to-one in Ohio and a recent Gallup poll shows her with a 20-point lead over Barack Obama among Catholics nationally. What explains her advantage?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m not sure I have an easy answer to that. If you look at polling in the \u201990s, when Clinton was in office, there were some strong ties from that. A good part of his constituency was Catholic voters, and she may be benefiting from that. And she\u2019s been in and out of our state for a number of years and sometimes there\u2019s just a familiarity. Obama has been very effective in other states that he\u2019s been able to spend time in and get to know people in and he\u2019s been able to do more of that in Pennsylvania.
\nDo you think Obama has any attributes that would have special appeal to Catholics?<\/strong>
\nHe\u2019s been able to have a strong sense of what it\u2019s like to be an underdog in society, having had to overcome all the obstacles he\u2019s had to overcome in his life, even apart from but especially his race. Not just to be a candidate for president but to be one of just three people out of 300 million to be in the final, so to speak, is a remarkable achievement. So he can identify with and understand what it\u2019s like to have obstacles in front of you and be an underdog. And that carried with it my sense of knowing him for a couple years now\u2026 he has a strong sense of right and wrong and a strong sense of justice and a real commitment to the common good. He knows when party is not always right and that we have to unify on the issues\u2026.
\nOne thing I should mention is that Senator Obama has talked about\u2026 his experience as a community organizer when he was very young and I had a similar experience in the Jesuit volunteer corps. And one of several reasons he and I had a good understanding of each other is that we both had the same experience, of being in communities that were struggling and trying to be of service. And for me it was not because there was some program\u2026 or because of my own strong sense of trying to vive back but a lot of it had its foundation in my faith. I\u2019m not sure if it were just a volunteer program as opposed to a Jesuit<\/em> volunteer program if I would have had the inclination to participate\u2026.
\nHe also has a sense of compassion and empathy. Some public officials are blessed\u2014you can\u2019t acquire this, but you are blessed with the gift of empathy, being able to empathize with those who are suffering. And he\u2019s been given that gift.
\nPro-life groups have criticized Obama for opposing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act as a U.S. Senator and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act as an Illinois legislator. How do you square your pro-life stance with someone as adamantly pro-choice as Obama?<\/strong>
\nI disagree with that in a very fundamental way, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll be other things I disagree with that are serious. I do think, though that he\u2019s the kind of public official\u2026 who takes the time and puts forth the effort to understand people who disagree on the issue of abortion and other issues. This is an issue where there is more finger pointing than there are attempts to bridge the gap, more lecturing than listening. But [Obama] has shown already to be the kind of person who listens as much as he preaches. And I think he\u2019s someone who tries to find common ground. He\u2019s had strong relationship with some fairly conservative members of the U.S. Senate. He would try to get to know people on the human level even if he couldn\u2019t agree with them on issues.
\nThere\u2019s a common ground on the issue of abortion that doesn\u2019t get much attention, but there\u2019s growing consensus on both sides of the issue\u2014even with extremes on either end\u2014that we want to reduce the number of abortions. We can debate on how to get there, but there is consensus about that. I think he would try to enhance that consensus. Part of that is certainly family planning, and one way is also adoption. [Obama] has talked about that several times, as well as helping pregnant women. I don\u2019t think either party is doing nearly enough to help pregnant women. A bill in the House that is identical to one I introduced in the Senate would get serious about helping pregnant women\u2026 by giving them a real choice. Sometimes they\u2019re all alone and they have a legal right to abortion but a lot of them would rather bear the child if someone could help them along the way.
\nHas Obama or Clinton signed onto your abortion reduction legislation?<\/strong>
\nThey haven\u2019t, but I\u2019ve just begun to dialogue with individual senators. [Obama] will be among the senators I\u2019m talking to.<\/p>\n


\n8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senator Bob Casey, Jr., a Catholic, pro-life Democrat, recently became Barack Obama’s highest-profile backer in the Pennsylvania, which holds its primary later this month. 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