Not that the President ever really had one, contra this Politico report: what Barack Obama had was a collection of useful idio… ah, “a group of religious organizations that were perhaps a little too trusting of the President’s motives and intentions.” Either way, the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was always merely window dressing; the Democrats have always had to grapple with the problem that their rank and file voters have drastically different views on religion than do their self-selected “elite” voters. And by that I don’t just mean differences in policy positions, although that’s certainly true, too: what I primarily mean is that your average Democratic voter is much more likely to love Jesus Christ because He was, well, Jesus Christ – and not because Jesus Christ merely had an interesting take on the social gospel.
As to why it failed… from looking at the article it may be due to the besetting sin of this administration; ineptitude that may have coupled with indifference, but ended up being married off to laziness. Reading between the lines, the administration apparently made the usual mistake of merely starting something with a splash (ineptitude) and not doing the boring scut-work (indifference), secure in the knowledge that if the job was really important then somebody else would feel obligated to take up the slack (laziness). And if nobody did take up the slack, and it turned out that somebody should have – well, that would be a problem for a few years down the road. Continue reading Barack Obama no longer really even pretending to have faith council.