Why Obama Seized the Faith-Based Mantle

Even for a campaign built on audacity, the boldness with which Barack Obama has picked President Bush's pocket and taken ownership of the faith-based initiative is a bit breathtaking. The effort to open up more federal grants to non-profits and religious institutions is, after all, Bush's signature domestic issue. For eight years, the president has consistently linked the cause to his personal reputation, even boasting during the 2004 campaign that he alone was responsible for changes involving faith-based programs: "Congress wouldn't act, so I signed an executive order. That means I did it on my own." At the last faith-based conference of his presidency in late June, Bush called the faith-based office that he created "one of the most important initiatives of this administration." The words "faith-based initiative" are now so closely associated with Bush that many Democrats long ago assumed the program was fatally flawed. So observers from both parties were surprised on July 1 when Obama declared that his concern about Bush's faith-based office was that it "never fulfilled its promise" — and then neatly pivoted to announce that an Obama administration would fix, expand and elevate the faith-based initiative.