Passion For Life.

As people weigh up the contrasting U.S. presidential candidates it’s going to be a tough choice between heart and head. Hearts will go for Barack Obama and heads for John McCain.

For anyone who has campaigned against racism and yearned for racial equality there is no doubt that Senator Obama’s successful campaign to secure the Democratic nomination represents a breakthrough for black people of historic proportions. Whatever the outcome in the November election no one can gainsay this extraordinary achievement.

As a teenager I joined a political party in the aftermath of the civil rights protests and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. A meeting I chaired in the town where I grew up was literally broken up by far-right activists preaching their own British brand of racial hatred.

Later, as a student, my first student union speech was given against apartheid in South Africa. I joined the protests against the visits of segregated South African sports teams. At a practical level I used two of my student vacations to teach immigrant children English.

Subsequently I crossed swords again with racially-motivated activists and on one occasion, as a local councillor, the windows of my home were daubed white.

For thirty years in Parliament I have continued to oppose racism in all its ugly forms.
So, yes, I am delighted that Barack Obama has come crashing through the glass ceiling of black achievement and has demonstrated that ability rather than colour is what matters; and, more than that, a lot of his agenda is what might loosely be called “the common good”.

My heart tells me that if I lived in the United States I would want to be on the hustings campaigning to see him elected to the White House.

But my head tells me something else - and looking at the opinion polling among America’s Catholic voters I know I am not alone. And the reason is straightforward: “it’s the unborn child, stupid.”

It is true that some American Catholic leaders have been waxing lyrically about Obama and urging Catholics to vote for him. But, in Pennsylvania, for instance, despite the support of its pro-life Senator, Bob Casey Jnr, just 30% of Democrats voted for Obama.

In the Senate Obama has voted against every effort to protect unborn human life - and voted to continue partial birth abortions. He even voted against an anti-infanticide bill to protect the lives of babies who survive an abortion and are born alive. What makes his positions particularly striking is that the overwhelming majority of black Christians – in the U.S. and the U.K. – are some of the strongest believers in the sanctity of human life and generally oppose the killing of the unborn. Obama has embraced this zeitgeist – the spirit of the age – because in Democratic circles (as with the British liberal left) it is impossible to climb to the top without doing so. Will that make him a good President?

It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s Achilles’ heel.
In 1992 so much of what Clinton said and stood for seemed to chime with me but his decision, that year, to fly home to Arkansas, where he was Governor, and oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector completely changed my perception. Rector was a retarded prisoner who had been lobotomised. Incapable of understanding what was happening, he was given a lethal injection. It was said at the time that this decision helped Clinton project an image as a man capable of taking tough decisions, and, as such, able to clinch that year’s election.

But if, when disentangling the rhetoric from the reality, the image from the issues, our hearts sometimes get it wrong, are our heads to be relied upon? Take Senator John McCain.

McCain’s courage and experience are considerable. In 1967 be bailed out of his A-4 aeroplane over Hanoi and was beaten by the mob who found him. A prize hostage, he rejected offers of a quick repatriation and was kept for five and a half years in Vietnamese prisons.

During a human rights visit to Vietnam I visited the Hoa Lo prison where he was kept (and tortured) and saw the cell where his uniform is kept now as a museum item. I was particularly struck that over the intervening years he and his wife have returned there seven times and are held in very high respect by his former captors, with whom he has become a symbol of reconciliation.

McCain is not part of the American religious right; he has an intuitive religious faith. He is opposed to the taking of unborn life. He has campaigned strongly against the use of torture. He has called for comprehensive progressive immigration reforms (which are in line with the recommendations of the US Catholic Bishops). He has demanded a response to global warming and his judgments on Iraq seem realistic and relevant. These attitudes strike a chord with blue-collar Catholics, Democrat and Republican alike who felt an instinctive dislike of the anti-Americanism of Jeremy Wright (Obama’s then pastor) and the elitism of some of Obama’s supporters.

But McCain is not without his negatives, too. He has not been clear on issues such as domestic poverty, education, welfare and health care – where Obama has the edge.

And, doubtless, McCain will be attacked because of his age: but don’t assume that all young people will be jumping on the Obama bandwagon.

One of my teenage children recently wrote an article for his school politics magazine stating why he would support “substance over style”; why he was opposed to America’s hard-line right wing but sees McCain as moderate; why he saw his age and experience as an asset rather than a negative: “He would be a strong leader and I believe he would be the best for America in the long run.”

So although the smart money must surely be on Barack Obama it would be an error to write off Senator John McCain; and perhaps they both have one more intriguing card to play.

The choice of their respective Vice Presidential running mates may, in this contest, assume a particular importance. If I were in John McCain’s shoes I would be moving heaven and earth to persuade Condoleezza Rice to run as my vice presidential candidate.

Being able to cast a vote for her would allow mine and many other hearts and heads to align.