At the beginning of the 20th century, Washington was one of this nation's most influential black leaders. His willingness to try to find common ground with whites who viewed — and treated — blacks as an inferior race made Washington someone presidents reached out to.I don't know where to start, but let's go with this: Booker T. Washington stood up to and worked with a notoriously bigoted man in President Teddy Roosevelt, because even Roosevelt realized that the world was permanently changing in a post-Civil War industrial era. Somehow, that's exactly like Obama picking the notoriously bigoted Rick Warren out of raw political expediency!Theodore Roosevelt, especially, turned to Washington for advice on "the Negro problem." Taking counsel from "the great accommodationist," as Washington was called, was an act of steam control by the Republican president at a time when the racial divide was undeniably this nation's most explosive problem.
"In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress," Washington said in an 1895 speech that established him as a black leader who was willing to temper the demands of blacks for racial equality.
Recently, Warren — who, like most evangelical leaders, disagrees sharply with Obama on social issues such as abortion and gay rights — sounded a similar note when he sought to assuage the concerns of those who question why he was asked to give the invocation.
"You don't have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand," he said in a speech to a group of Muslims in California.
Look folks, no matter what Obama does to reach evangelical voters, he won't get them. Not that he should stop trying to reach them: he is President of the entire United States. But Rick Warren is just a terrible attempt...and this article comparing him to one of the most influential black leaders in history manages to even be worse.
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