How They Talked About Abortion

William Saletan on how the candidates talked about abortion during the debate:

McCain has been trying to make the election a referendum on character: Country first, Obama pals around with terrorists, yada yada yada. How does abortion fit that mold? By exposing Obama as an extremist. Here's McCain's key passage tonight:

"Sen. Obama, as a member of the Illinois State Senate, voted in the judiciary committee against a law that would provide immediate medical attention to a child born of a failed abortion. He voted against that. … Then there was another bill before the Senate judiciary committee in the state of Illinois not that long ago, where he voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion, one of the late-term abortion, a really—one of the bad procedures, a terrible. … I don't know how you align yourself with the extreme aspect of the pro-abortion movement in America. … It was clear-cut votes that Sen. Obama voted, I think, in direct contradiction to the feelings and views of mainstream America."

Bad. Terrible. Extreme. Clear-cut. Feelings. Mainstream America. This is the way McCain, Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush talk: There's honor and evil, good guys and bad guys. We fight for the good side. Our opponents don't. They're extreme.

Obama argued that "women, in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision." But his key passage was very different from McCain's:

"This is an issue that—look, it divides us. And in some ways, it may be difficult to—to reconcile the two views. But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, "We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby." Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that's where we can find some common ground, because nobody's pro-abortion. I think it's always a tragic situation. We should try to reduce these circumstances."

Common ground. Prevent. Options. Help. Reduce. These are defusing and calming words. They fit Obama's personality. But more than that, they're pragmatic. They convey action, progress, solution. Obama has been talking about abortion this way all along, when the subject comes up. He doesn't like us-and-them language. He doesn't like fights. Even on this issue—one of the nastiest, angriest, most polarizing topics in modern politics—he looks for a course most of us can agree on.

Thursday, October 16, 2008