President Obama has pronounced on the Cordoba Center (aka Ground Zero Mosque) controversy.Speaking to a Ramadan gathering he said this:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York.

Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan.  The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.  And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is (sic) just unimaginable.  So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders.  And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. 

But let me be clear.  As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center 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.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.

… And let us also remember who we’re fighting against, and what we’re fighting for.  Our enemies respect no religious freedom.  Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Good, principled stuff? Indeed rather safe, placing an emphasis on traditional US constitutional principles around which all might rally?

So the media thought, frothed up by White House spinners.

But then it all unravelled at speed, with all sorts of Democrats moving to put some distance between the President and themselves in this issue and sundry ‘clarifications’ coming from the White House.

Power Line astutely suggests where the President went wrong:

Obama’s Cairo speech, delivered shortly after he became president, also relied heavily on the language of synthesis. The Jews have been hard done by, and so have the Palestinians, he argued. The synthesis lies in both groups recognizing the other’s grievances, and proceeding from there.

The appeal of this type of rhetoric is obvious. First, Obama was able to cast himself as a reasonable man, capable of seeing both sides of an issue. Second, he was able to cast himself as a decent and charitable man, capable of seeing the good in the fiercest of clashing adversaries. Third, he was able to cast himself as an intelligent man (albeit in the facile manner of a bright college sophomore or a slightly above average law student), capable of finding similarities where lesser intellects can spot only differences.

Finally, and most importantly, Obama the synthesizer cast himself as a problem solver. His seeming ability to identify common ground was not just an exercise in intellectual nimbleness and human decency. For many, it held out the promise that longstanding conflicts might be made to recede…

… But Obama did not embrace, even intellectually, a synthesis in this matter. Rather, he came down squarely on the side of the imam. He spoke up on behalf of his right to build the mosque on "hallowed ground" without ever suggesting that doing so might be wrong or misguided.

In fact, he implied that putting the mosque at this spot was a favorable development because our willingness to have it there reaffirms who we are as a people and drives home the contrast between our values and those of jihadists…

Jonah Goldberg is unimpressed with the way Obama has tackled this one:

The supposedly pragmatic political wise men have been blinded by ideology or incompetence and have failed to see what was so obviously around the corner. A big, honking Islamic center built to capitalize on 9/11, in a building that was damaged on 9/11? What could go wrong?

… “He felt he had a responsibility to speak,” said David Axelrod, as if he were drafting the inscription on Obama’s Profiles in Courage Award. But by Saturday morning, Obama tried to weasel out of it with the sort of lawyerly parsing everybody despises. Speaking to reporters in Florida, Obama claimed he had no position on the “wisdom” of the project, and anyone who mistook his academic comments about building a mosque in Lower Manhattan for an endorsement misunderstood him.

Well, if his real intent was to remain agnostic, he should fire his speechwriter immediately.

Of course that wasn’t his intent. He wanted to seem heroically principled. But when he was hit with an entirely foreseeable backlash (according to one poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the mosque), he once again led with his glass jaw and, in effect, told everybody they were too dimwitted to grasp the brilliant nuance of his remarks.

Fire the Obama speechwriter? Yes.

Forgetting the merits, look at the poor technique and remember that it is not that politicians make mistakes as they all do – it is the quality of those mistakes which are so revealing.

Basically, the Obama ‘remarks’ erred towards a trite, oh-too-clever legal formalism which was clearly just not politically or morally good enough in the circumstances.

As some Democrat-leaning commentators are saying, President Bush would not have been so obviously banal. Whether or not you liked the policy, Bush’s speeches had a sense of intellectual integrity, of someone not ducking the hard questions. Of, in a word, leadership.

Here’s what I would have drafted. Note not so much the language, but the underlying chain of thought:

The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.  The pain and  suffering for those who lost loved ones are unimaginable.  Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. 

Some people see the 9/11 attacks as an onslaught by Islam itself against the USA. That’s not what I believe. Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Our country allows freedom of religion. We have thousands of churches and synagogues and chapels and mosques. People are free to build new ones, subject to local planning laws and such formalities.

This is not the case in many parts of the world. And it is bound to offend and even annoy many Americans if support for this new Islamic centre in this special area of New York comes from countries which oppress Christianity, Judaism other religions in the name of Islam, or from Islamic groups which demand respect for their supposed sensitivities but rail against the sensitivities of others.

Tolerance is not a blank cheque for those who think ill of our country to abuse its freedom. But we do not deal with intolerance by being intolerant ourselves…

Something like that would have touched on the core policy and philosophical dilemmas here, at least obliquely. And sent a firm but friendly message to Islam that yes, it too needs to work towards the highlands of freedom and open-mindedness.

Instead, as Goldberg says the President’s poor drafting has simply made the whole business much worse, not least for Obama himself:

By elevating an already stupid idea and a poisonous debate, he forced everyone to take a side on a polarizing issue (including vulnerable Democrats like Nevada senator Harry Reid, who, late Monday, came out against the mosque), while undermining his own credibility, not to mention America’s reputation around the world.