At the outset of the primary a year and a half ago, I wondered aloud whether the Democratic candidates would be inclined to keep or kill President Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives (FBCI).

The issue didn't come up at all in the primary, but now that the general election is here and Obama is aggressively courting evangelicals, we finally have an answer - kind of. It appears Obama wants to kill Bush's FBCI and replace it with...his version of more or less the same thing. It's a fairly nimble (if somewhat cynical) political maneuver in that Obama is trying to generate a public break with Bush and reinforce his image as an "agent of change" while endorsing the essential concept behind Bush's program.

As I wrote last February:

Ironically, if the White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives was spawned out of political considerations, as some critics say, those same political considerations might be what save it under a future Democratic administration - thereby cementing the FBCI as George W. Bush's biggest domestic legacy.

Even more ironic, perhaps, is that if given the proper amount of amount of attention and cultivation under a Democratic administration, the FBCI could provide a remarkable opportunity for the Democratic party to open a dialogue with and reclaim support among the evangelical community. In other words, as a political tool the FBCI could wind up being equally as valuable - if not more so - to a future Democratic administration as it was for George W. Bush.

Political considerations prevented Obama from killing the FBCI outright, though not from trying to deny Bush a piece of his domestic legacy. And, should he win the White House, Obama's outreach to the faith community through his Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships could prove an important political tool in securing his reelection.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has released a testimonial by John DiIulio, director of President Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001:

Senator Barack Obama has offered a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations. He has focused admirably on those groups that supply vital social services to people and communities in need. His plan reminds me of much that was best in both then Vice President Al Gore's and then Texas Governor George W. Bush's respective first speeches on the subject in 1999. Especially in urban America, all the empirical evidence continues to show that local faith-based organizations can make a measurable civic difference. His constitutionally sound and administratively feasible ideas about community-serving partnerships hold special promise for truly disadvantaged children, youth, and families. Many good community-serving initiatives can be built, expanded, or sustained on the common ground that Senator Obama has staked out for us here.

UPDATE II: Beliefnet gives Obama's proposal a 9 out of 10 on its "God-o-Meter." Editor Dan Gilgoff writes:

That's why Obama's announcement today...is so significant. Not only is Obama showing how faith would shape policy in his administration, he's being so bold as to criticize Bush's faith-based program for not going far enough in opening the federal social services spigot to churches and other faith-based groups.

In effect, he's out-Bushing George W. Bush in one of the President's specialty areas -- connecting faith and public policy.