Lesson from America: Don't mix local and national politics in the silly season

By David Higgerson on Aug 24, 10 08:39 PM

Barack Obama will go down in history as a politician future generations can learn a lot from. Regardless of what happens in this year's mid-terms or at the next presidential elections, the rulebook he's already started writing will be cited for decades to come.

There's the way he went from outsider to Democrat candidate, the way he tapped into lots of small donations to see off his cash-rich republican rivals, not to mention the way he, finally, forced his healthcare reforms through.

This last month, however, there's another lesson which can be added to the book - the one where Obama proved you should think very carefully before you, if a national politician, wade into a local issue.

In New York, there's been a debate rumbling on about the desire of the local Muslim community to build a new mosque about two blocks away from Ground Zero. By the time the opponents had put posters on buses around the city, the media was beginning to give it some attention. The right-wingers who seek to demonise Islam were soon talking about 'building on top of Ground Zero.'

Ok, so it's close by and of course it's a sensitive issue, but worthy of American presidential attention? I don't think so. And I also think that if Obama hadn't made a point of talking about during a speech to mark Ramadan, then it would have remained a generally local issue.

But a fortnight on, and it's still the main talking point on CNN, CNBC, Fox News and all the rest - largely because the world's most powerful man charged in to have his say. Now what he said was actually spot on:

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as everyone else in this country.
"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.

"This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable."

What he said wasn't controversial. The fact he said something at all, was. Regardless of location, this is essentially a local planning matter. The words of the president basically gave the greenlight for the American TV stations, already short of news in the silly season, to keep on talking about it. And, in the process, the commentators became more and more extreme.

During the course of my recent holiday, on the wrong side of the pond, the mosque was talked about virtually every day. Even the generally straight-bat CNN found itself with pundits who said things like 'everyone knows Islam is a religion of hate' and 'they won't stop until they rule the world.' I couldn't watch Fox News, but from what I've read, it was worse. The most random, unchallenged quote I heard, was from someone who said 'would they let you build a church next to a concentration camp in Germany.' Enough said.

In vox pops outside the Ground Zero, workers queued up to say it shouldn't happen and they wouldn't take work there when it did happen. Somehow, CNN contrived to find a row over a mosque being built next to a church in California and linked the two stories together. Voices and opinions which are so full on as to be offensive were being aired, unchallenged as moral outrage was wrapped around normally hidden racial hatred.

Obama could easily have made his speech without mentioning events in New York. Nobody would have argued with anything he'd said (not publicly anyway). Instead, his intervention, so out of the ordinary for a local planning matter, has kept the fuming pundits on both sides of the fence in appearance fees for the best part of three weeks.

The irony here being, as Fox 5 News in New York reported a week ago, that the building where the Mosque could be sited is already used for Islamic prayer - without a single complaint from anyone.

Obama's new approach to politics has been a refreshing one, but I suspect he's now realising that there is a very good reason why national politicians don't get involved in local politics away from their patch.

And all this because the President of the United States decided to pass comment on it.