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Originally Posted by bradclark1
He can pledge allegiance to just blacks if he wants to but not as my president. There are some things with politicians I can take like the likelihood they are crooks or sexual deviants and some I can't take. For me personally this is a can't take.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but did not JFK say, "First I am the President of the USA, and then a Catholic". Given that the USA is a secular state I would accord Obama the intelligence to understand that his religious beliefs stay on the other side of the Oval office door at all times. No majority is going to vote him into office as the spiritual leader of America.
Kennedy said he would follow his own conscience, not allowing any church interferences with what his conscience dictated: "I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair." In his speech, he faced squarely points on which the Vatican might like to interfere:
Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected—on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject—I will make my decision...in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.
If his conscience and his public duty were ever in conflict—which he thought impossible—he said, "I would resign the office."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20939
Would it help if Obama made a similar undertaking?