Above His Pay Grade

At the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, Rev. Rick Warren asked Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain to give answers to his questions. The following transcript is taken from here and the whole transcript is available here.

Rev. Rick Warren: "Now, let’s deal with abortion. Forty million abortions since Roe v. Wade. You know, as a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time. All of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions. At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?"

Barack Obama: "Well, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade."

Obama said, ". . . answering that question. . . . is above my pay grade." And this man wants to be president! Almost all presidential decisions are above the presidential pay grade which is small compared to the business world. We don’t pay presidents for their decisions. We elect them to make decisions.

Pastor Warren’s salary would be small in comparison also, yet he said he has to deal with this all of the time. So by self-declaration, Obama could not be the pastor of a church because he doesn’t get paid enough to answer that question. How unpresidential!

Obama said he can’t answer it from a scientific perspective and didn’t try. He said he can’t answer it from a theological perspective and didn’t. But he said there is a moral and ethical perspective to abortion.

"But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I'm absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue I think is not paying attention. So that would be point number one."

OK, there’s a moral and ethical perspective to abortion, but what is it? No answer from Obama.

Obama continued: "But point number two, I am pro-choice. I believe in Roe v. Wade. . ."

Ah, there’s a legal perspective that Obama believes in. Now how does Obama come to his legal decision?

Obama: I ". . . come to that [legal] conclusion not because I'm pro abortion, but because ultimately I don't think women make these decisions casually. They wrestle with these things in profound ways. In consultation with their pastors or spouses or their doctors and their family members."

So Obama makes his legal decision by observing that women don’t make these decisions casually, that is, that his legal conclusion is based on the grave process of other people making decisions. Wow, that is solid legal reasoning that would pass any Supreme Court test!

Obama continues: "And so for me, the goal right now should be— and this is where I think we can find common ground (and by the way I have now inserted this into the Democrat Party platform) is how do we reduce the number of abortions because the fact is that although we've had a president who is opposed to abortions over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down."

So let’s all have common ground around Obama's legal perspective which really is a social perspective of reducing the number of abortions, which hasn’t happened under President Bush, but evidently it will under President Obama.

With his logic, because a person wrestled hard while deciding to embezzle and reduced the amount of intended embezzlement for social reasons, the embezzlement is legal. Or because a person really struggled with bumping off a family and reduced the number of victims for social reasons, the killings were legal.

Answering that question about the baby is truly above Obama’s pay grade. And he thinks Justice Clarence Thomas was unqualified!