In my last post, I asked Democrats to identify the GOP presidential aspirant who had the greatest chance of being crushed like a vulgar mosquito by either Clinton or Obama or Edwards on Election Day. Now it is your turn, esteemed Republican voter. Who is your cherished McGovern? Your beloved Mondale? Your hard-to-top Dukakis? Your oh-so-kind Kerry? Who do you want to see grinning unsuspectingly, drenched in a cascade of balloons and confetti, arm draped around a running mate, swaying a-rhythmically to music piped in over the massive sound system (Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain," perhaps?) at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August? My contribution to this discussion about the biggest potential loser consists of risk-assessing the candidates’ Faith and Values liabilities. And let me stress that for the first time in recent memory the Democrats have far fewer of these than their GOP counterparts.
As I will note next week one of the biggest political stories of 2007 was that the Democrats finally “got” religion. Getting religion meant keeping northeastern Liberals with ambivalent or cryptic relations to their faith off the slate. Getting religion meant equipping each front-runner with a credible “narrative of belief.” Getting religion meant keeping any idea or person that smacked of extreme secularism at a distance of five hundred yards from the candidates (and, presumably, the Pepsi Center in Denver on August 25-28).
With his solid Baptist past and Methodist present, John Edwards will be hard to tar as a cultured despiser of religion. Were he to win his party’s nomination he will continue to speak about poverty while adducing his scriptural prooftexts. So-called values voters may not appreciate his liberal politics. Others may sneer at his massive wealth. Yet his faith commitments will be hard to doubt, misrepresent, Swift Boat, and so forth.
The same can be said about Barack Obama--the most likely of all the presidential contenders to be offered a professorship at a theological seminary later in life. Were he to represent his party he would conceivably rethink and redefine its understanding of the proper relation between Church and State for years to come—a project that he already embarked upon in his The Audacity of Hope.
There are, of course, youthful indiscretions to be reckoned with as well as a problematic spiritual mentor. But the Senator from Illinois has no major faith-based vulnerabilities to speak of. Like Edwards, he could conceivably sluice off millions of Evangelical votes in a national election.
That Hillary Clinton has glaring “negatives” in the eyes of many voters is undeniable. But these no longer center predominantly on religious issues. She has inoculated herself expertly against the charge, often heard in the 1990s, that she is some sort of radical, godless feminist. Even prior to her 2000 senate run in New York, Clinton had seeded her biography with fact-checkable references to early Church experiences, life-long Bible study, a spiritual mentor, and a penchant for daily prayer.
If she were to win the nomination we might see a contest between two very determined constituencies. Coming out for Hillary (or any Democrat, actually) will be a massive anti-Christian Right block (who I have elsewhere dubbed devalued voters). Opposing them will be the large, loud (and, quite frankly, occasionally scary) anti-Hillary brigades. This cohort wants (or thinks it wants) a piece of the former First Lady and it is most likely Hillary that they wish to see rejoicing in Denver.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
