How much political gain could Obama make if he handled the Ground Zero Mosque controversy better?

First of all-Harry Reid will say and do anything to protect his butt. He is a sad, pathetic weasel of a politician. He would turn on his own family if it got him votes.

Now for the main question-Obama totally flip flopped as you say. He first said that there is a right for the mosque to be built anywhere in the US. The next day he came back and said more to the effect of it might be better somewhere else, but he wasn't going to get into the debate. He had just injected himself into the debate.

As for Obama being such an intellectual, he has made some SERIOUS errors here.

During this same time period he held an Iftar dinner at the White House for a bunch of muslims and hollywood elites and the like. Please look up the text of his remarks on the www.whitehouse.gov official site of his administration. President Obama says,

"And tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan —- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago."

This is a completely false statement. First, islam has not always been a part of America. Islam played almost zero role in the founding or early DECADES of this country. Doesn't mean there is any knock on islam. Our country was simply founded and populated by Judao-Christian peoples. An educated man would know this. Second, there was no ambassador of Tunisia hosted by Thomas Jefferson. There was an emissary or scumbag who came to the US demanding payment of tributes/ransom for the seizing of US ships and hostage taking of the sailors. This emissary demanded two things from Jefferson. He wanted a place to stay, and he asked for concubines. Yes, this great diplomat of sorts, according to Obama, wanted whores. Jefferson is said to have referred him to his Sec'y of State, James Madison for the hooker issue.

At one point, this wonderful man called the native Americans "vile heretics" because he was told they did not worship Moses, Jesus or Mohammed, but the Great Spirit.

Yep, Obama was citing a great, classy and wonderfully happy event that never occurred. We happened to be at war with those people. They were the Barbary Pirates. Funny how you can't take the terrorism out of the US/muslim relationship over all this time.

Some things never change.

Obama could have done a great thing on the mosques. He could have simply stated that he understands the mosque would be LEGAL there, but in keeping with the reality of the 3000 dead two blocks away in the name of Mohammed, the classy thing would be to move a few more blocks away.

A group of Carmelite nuns (Roman Catholics) were asked by the Pope to move their new monastery/cloister further away from the site of a German death camp. The Roman Catholics had nothing to do with killing all those Jews there. It just might have offended some Jews to have a Christian shrine so close to something that was so uniquely a place of pain - the shoah - in Jewish history. There were thousands of Catholics killed at the same death camp. The Catholics moved out of respect even though they had no blame for the issue.

This is an issue where good muslims everywhere should feel shame on some level. They did not do the deed themselves, but it was done in the name of their religion. This would be like the Mormons deciding to put an LDS temple on the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre. Look up that one. That was just over a hundred slaughtered by the Mormons. Think if it would have been three thousand people.

Yes, Obama did a doozy of one on this one. He could have either stayed out or took the middle road stating that it might not be a classy idea to put such a mosque in that place if it were to cause emotional upset for families of the victims.

I know people that died that day in that building trying to rescue people. Obviously, the majority of the people answering this question didn't know anyone. They also have no sense of decency.

God bless America. May she not fall from the scourge of misguided political correctness or the onslaught of radical, islamo facsist terrorism.

He acted exactly as he should have. Obama is a scholar, who understands the constitution and intends to abide by it.

The first amendment says, in plain english, "Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

What part of that can't people understand? Or is it just a matter of ignorance?

November is quick drawing near and an overly well factor too. If he loses his majority and the help of his mouthpieces Pelosi and Reid, he'll be difficult placed to get the relaxation of his unknown schedule applied. Instead of losing time giving the improvement of his opinion on issues which can be of no problem to him, he must be placing his vigour into task production.

He should have stayed out of it. There was no response he could have given which wouldnt have caused him to stick his shoe in his mouth. Either way-anything he said would have been a wrong answer in such a situation.

Why anyone who is reared and developed outside the dominant mindset but here in America endeavors not to abide it while simultaneously successfully undertakes to abide his or her own culture, 'has' to be subject to be torn in several directions. Had Obama said nothing, there would express a problem with that just as surely. Some might say, who is black or white, that maybe he'd've been better to simply make his point on this and then defer to silence, then just move on to the greater concerns that plague the nation.

The dominant mindset of the USA has long been accustomed to being adhered- and demurred- and deferred to -- a presumption that is nothing but the evidence that is a sense of Entitlement. Theirs hails from having enjoyed the vantage point for more than 4 centuries, who pre-suppose that their ways are 'the' ways. That Harry Reid deserted Obama is but one mere indication of the mindset endemic to the dominant culture of this nation -- such that when these types of people are put to the wall about any thought-important matter regarding propriety or protocol -- what is called "keeping up appearance," of which the dominant mindset is a strictest adherent -- whomever is seen as outside this and found wanting, is subject to be spurned and vacated. The dominant model is a mindset that is ever been akin to rhetoric more than substance: an inherently weak mindset, double-minded in all its respects, pledging allegiance to none but who shares with the power component that wields authority as has been wielded now for 4 centuries -- it is everywhere, awash in virtually everyone: the media, the Institute, in decorum, and is a sensibility that has run roughshod over the decencies of anyone or group of people otherwise who dares question it or who do not fancy to bear it.

President Obama has more of these sorts of attitudes yet to visit upon him and has a steepest of learning curve in this wise. But he is tough to it, accustomed to it, having been raised a black man in the United States of America, not to mention is highly educated. His now dilemma simply comes with the territory, in which the person of color knows that he or she has to be on his or her p's and q's from the first moment that he or she will have begun to think independently on becoming a teenager. So many of these officials, such as Reid and untold numbers of other public policy and political people -- no matter how abiding did theirs affect to be at first about Obama -- were never given to somehow "un-install" a hard-wired programming first instilled in them at their earliest years on earth. There still exists two worlds in the USA: that of the minority; and the other, the majority. Only since the coming of Obama had many [Caucasian] Americans ever framed events in this way or required pondering that this rift of culture were even a question needing posed: there exists tremendous will in having privilege: one is not constrained to think broadly and reflect at length. Yet now these same people have to come face-to-face with their own discomforts with a man in office who is 'not' of Anglo-Saxon-German-American assumption. Thus all of what we see is but the testing of 'them' more than a testing of Obama. Here we see those hitherto pent up racist reflexes now coming to the fore after having been subdued for in fact untold decades on end. Of course, again, this is a commentary on the Majority among us, not the Minority. In the United States there may always appear if not evidence a double-standard demonstrated against cultures and ethnicities of color. And just why Obama should feel need to accomodate that any longer is quite an equation to behold, but nonetheless requires solving again if not finally.

It's a local zoning issue. The federal government has no reason to be involved.

HE DID HANDLE IT WELL,the weak can't forgive,forgiveness is an attribute of the strong,OBAMA'S decision is like a beacon flashing around the world showing America's strength and compassion,only small bitter men complain,what's your name

He should just leave it alone. It's not his choice anyway. The people who want to build the Islamic community center own that building and are within their rights to build it.

The right wing Islamophobes just want Obama to comment on this "nontroversy" so they can take whatever he says, twist it around, and pounce on him for not being in tune to their "sensitivities."

It is revealing!

Arguments against the Mosque are based on prejudice, bigotry and false information. It is very hard to win here!!

he stated the law about this but after that obama became ambivalent about it and that will, hurt his Image more than anything else about this non-issue.