Cult of the Presidency More Powerful Than “Fundamentalism”
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Andrew writes in response to the post below:
And why were they so trusting of Bush and unable to see his flaws, Daniel? You have to see the link between the fundamentalist psyche and the suspension of critical judgment in the Republican party for the past eight years. A non-born-again president would never have been allowed to get away with it.
Actually, I think we could attribute just as much of this inability to see (or perhaps it was merely unwillingness to criticize?) Bush’s flaws to their identification with Bush’s own religion. This is the same identification or bonding with a politician that made supporters of Palin so livid when she was criticized, because they took it as a criticism of themselves. To that extent, I might be more willing to acknowledge that evangelicals as evangelicals contributed more to the enabling of Bush than I said below, but I can imagine, and I remember, the same thing happening with strong partisans of all stripes and secular ideologues. Let me add that I am skeptical that “fundamentalist psyche” has much to do with it. What Andrew calls the “fundamentalist psyche” seems to me to be the mind of an ideologue, and a lot of the errors in question have more to do with displacing Christianity with the substitute of Americanism. Far more worrisome, and far more widespread, than any fundamentalism (which Andrew has always defined far, far too broadly) is the tendency to give wide latitude to and to make up excuses for the President of one’s own party. This is not something unique to Republican partisans, and it is certainly not unique to evangelicals. If there is a stronger attachment to the cult of the Presidency among Republicans because the White House has typically been their main access to power at the national level since WWII, that is a serious problem within the GOP that would need to be addressed. Caesarism, not so-called “Christianism,” is the much greater problem.
To say that evangelicals are not the sole or primary cause of the GOP’s woes is not to say that they have never gone wrong (for some balance to my original post, I recommend Prof. Bacevich’s chapter on evangelicals in The New American Militarism), but one reason they are so easy to blame is the same reliability of support that allows them and their issues to be taken for granted by the party. Consider what things would look like if the parties’ positions were reversed. If Obama should blunder and become deeply unpopular, but black voters remain steadfastly supportive of him out of a sense of loyalty and support for a Democratic President, will they be what ails the Democratic Party? Wouldn’t attempts to pin the blame on them seem absurd? Wouldn’t there be far more important factors to consider?
Update: Joe Carter makes a similar point about the lack of influence of the “religious right” on policy:
Evangelicals constitute the largest single voting bloc in America, yet what do we have to show for it? Can Parker (or anyone else) name the significant achievements of evangelicals over the past few years? I can’t think of anything. (We can’t even take credit for Prop-8 in California. That was due to the hard work and funding by Mormons.)
Rather than assuming that evangelicals are a large, powerful, committed political bloc that, for some inexplicable reason, is completely ineffective, the more realistic conclusion is that politically engaged evangelicals are like a herd of unicorns: powerful and abundant in the imagination while not actually existing in the real world.
Filed under: politics, religion
22 Responses to “Cult of the Presidency More Powerful Than “Fundamentalism””
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I wonder if you really want to follow this line of logic through to it’s natural permeations.
Among the blunders of the Bush administration, include “cherry picking” intelligence for war in Iraq, torture, spying on American citizens. These activities are, in the eyes of many Americans, criminal. Yet they Bush and his administration have been aided and abetted in their crimes and protected from investigation of their crimes by Republicans conservatives who controlled congress and conservative pundits.
Now, our nation faces grave challenges; economic collapse, war, cultural strife. Should we pursue justice or tackle these problems? Personally, I’m disgusted with the hijacking of conservative values. Christianism isn’t conservative. I think it’s as politically dangerous as an theocracy, including the extremists we’re supposedly at war with in the Middle East (but it’s really a war over oil resources, isn’t it?).
Republicans are already guilty of the silliness you project onto blacks.
I suggest again you’ve lost your way. Conservatives used to conserve. They used to respect privacy. They used to believe in small government. They believed in personal responsibility — which was about more then respecting the rights of the unborn.
You’ve lost your way.
Obviously you don’t read this blog or magazine very consistently. Not more than five days ago I made an argument that criminals in this administration should be brought to justice and it would be a bright, happy day for America if that happened. I write and blog for one of the few conservative magazines that has opposed this administration essentially every step of the way. You’re disgusted by the hijacking of conservative values? Subscribe to TAC and find a whole universe of people who take the same view. You want conservatives who respect privacy, believe in small government and personal responsibility? Read Bacevich’s The Limits of Power and come back here to find us repeating the same kinds of arguments every day. It is just possible that I and my colleagues represent precisely the sort of conservatism you’re describing. Look around a little more before you jump to conclusions.
Laughing; I don’t read the magazine at all. Just started reading the blog, thanks to Andrew. I’ll stick to Mother Jones and The Atlantic if I’m gonna kill trees.
But Conservatives have lived in a a destructive echo chamber all of their own making far too long; need some bi-partisan counterpoint. Good for improvising on. And I will do a bit more reading. But I’m betting that those lines of holding Bush/Cheney responsible are relatively new developments; they should extend back many years.
How far back will I have to go to find the roots of responsibility, Daniel? How far?
The magazine was founded in the fall of 2002 with the specific purpose of challenging the administration’s policies and its perversions of conservatism. I only started blogging in the summer of ‘04, so you can check the archives to see what I’ve had to say back that far, but I had been writing against them before that. We have been holding them accountable a lot longer than our friends at The Atlantic. In other words, you would have lost your bet. Keep laughing.
But I’m betting that those lines of holding Bush/Cheney responsible are relatively new developments; they should extend back many years.
How far back will I have to go to find the roots of responsibility, Daniel? How far?
Well, the magazine was co-founded by a man who ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000. Is that far back enough, or do you need evidence that this magazine’s contributors were railing against Bush for mismanaging the Texas Rangers?
As for this from Sullivan:
You have to see the link between the fundamentalist psyche and the suspension of critical judgment in the Republican party for the past eight years. A non-born-again president would never have been allowed to get away with it.
“Get away with” what? In the crucial period when Bush gutted American civil liberties, authorized torture and indefinite extra-legal detention, and launched the war in Iraq he “got away with it” because establishment figures (and, yes, self-styled contrarian Andrew Sullivan is an establishment figure, too) were on board. Having swayed public opinion in favor of the Bush Administration through aggressive propaganda, Sullivan now sneers at the people who continue to believe the lies he told. A little more humility from a man who claims to be the defender of “the conservative soul” might be nice.
Daniel, a small favor – when writing, could you refer to Andrew Sullivan by his full name? It is always a distraction when I have to roll over the link to see which Andrew you’re quoting.
Where does one begin?
In regards to Evangelicals and socons more generally, there is a terrible tendency to treat competence as an optional criteria. He has a good heart or he is a really good person seems to cover over many sins. There is just a terrible streak of romanticism to the whole thing.
If one is going to blame the socons, one would have to blame them for dereliction to the other duties of governance. Hearing “Oh but Bush is pro-life” over the past 8 years no matter what the topic says something. When I wrote more on abortion the past 6 months than all 4 candidates did combined, that tells you something. In so much as they make the choices in the primaries, which is undeniable in the South and Midwest, they really should bear the responsibility.
My sense has always been that evangelicals invest a faith in politicians that is very similar to their faith in God. If you profess to be born again, and they perceive that you really are – then you have their faith entirely. You are one of them, and whatever your deficiencies – your heart is in the right place, isn’t it? And that is enough.
…except, as we’ve seen during the Bush years, that isn’t enough.
And so what I want to know is this: Do conservative evangelicals, on the whole, accept any blame for what’s unfolded during the Bush years? Or are they – like the Angry White Male portion of the GOP base – entirely blameless, victims?
Can people whose lives are defined by faith ever get to a point where they are willing to admit that faith alone is not enough? Or is that quite impossible?
gsmart, if you can call much of the Republican Party conservative evangelicals, they will find a way to blame the Democrats for their failure to do anything, for blocking reform to Fannie and Freddie, rather than blame themselves for not doing what was right. They are blameless victims.
“Do conservative evangelicals, on the whole, accept any blame for what’s unfolded during the Bush years?”
On the whole, I would guess that they don’t, in part because they tend not to agree that there are that many things for which the GOP should be blamed. That is the original, huge blind spot. Part of this is a lack of self-criticism, but another part of it is a defensive reaction, which wild accusations that they are to blame for everything wrong with the GOP/America/the universe provoke. This defensiveness would then dovetail with an existing siege mentality.
There is one fundamental and all-important difference between civil libertarians on the one side, and the Christian fundamentalists / evangelicals on the other.
Civil libertarians don’t have much pull over specific policies, and in that sense are parallel to evangelicals / fundamentalists. I agree on that much.
The massive difference, though, is that Republican politicians feel the need to pretend that they care very much what evangelicals say. They pander to them, they work very hard for their votes. John McCain was informed that he *had* to choose Sarah Palin, in order to shore up his cred with that side of the party.
Can you even imagine Obama, or any other Democratic nominee, being forced — forced!! — by the party to nominate a VP candidate to curry favor with the black community, or the civil liberties community?
“I’m sorry, Barack, but this Joe Biden guy just isn’t strong enough on civil liberties. You have to pick Russ Feingold or Dennis Kucinich to placate the base.”
Laugh out loud crazy, right?
And that’s the difference. The crazy right-wing Christian types (a la Ms. Parker) have huge pull over Republican politics, even though they don’t have much sway over policy. The crazy left-wing types (if we can thus designate people concerned for civil liberties in an age of unending war) has no similar clout.
And that is the sense in which Ms. Parker is correct.
I hate to clog things up by replying to my own comment, but I need to correct my previous post. I shouldn’t have accused Sullivan of telling “lies.” I think he believes everything he writes. A more charitable way of putting it is that he got caught up in the emotion of the moment and argued for things that he now realizes were bad ideas. I can’t begrudge him that because I went through the same thing.
But his zeal to make amends by finding an even bigger monster to slay is a little off-putting. Having realized that he erred in railing against “Islamo-fascism” he has now decided that the fight against fundamentalism, very broadly and idiosyncratically defined, is the new defining struggle of our generation. His impulse to see every public policy issue as a manichean death-match isn’t a particularly helpful point of view.
The religious right got nothing out of the Bush years? What of Chuck Colson evangelizing to the most captive audience of all, prisoners who were required to convert to his form of Christianity as part of earning early release? And Plan B delayed as long as bureaucratically possible? And reinstatement of the Mexico City policy. And two Supreme Court justices?
Yes, I understand that they never get as much as they want. But that’s more because of the constrains imposed by law and process and Constitution than because Bush or future friendly politician doesn’t try.
I’d say that Evangelicals are to blame for demanding nothing of their political representatives except making certain, bible-based laws come to pass. Since they are the biggest force behind the Republican party and its years of success in attaining power, they carry a lot of the blame in putting the G.W. Bush and his cronies at the helm, and the ruin it has brought all of us.
That is, because Evangelicals too often decide to vote based on who gives the superficial impression of the one who goes to church more regularly, they have enabled terrible governments.
Beyond this making Evangelicals the enablers of our abusers, this behavior indeed makes democracy a farce. I can go to church 7 days a week and be utterly Machiavellian. There are many potentially great presidents in this country, I’m sure, who don’t go to Christian church at all, and who are therefore completely precluded from high levels of government.
This is a very large part of our country’s problems. We should elect the best leaders to take us into the future, not the person who decides to spend time sitting in a pew (potentially plotting their self-serving plots therein).
Discrimination of all kinds is rot, as it keeps qualified people down and lifts the unqualified up. We need the best person as president. That’s it. We cannot afford anyone else. Discriminating against those the right can paint as not sufficiently religious, and basing votes superficial issues, brings downfall to everyone.
“Consider what things would look like if the parties’ positions were reversed. If Obama should blunder and become deeply unpopular, but black voters remain steadfastly supportive of him out of a sense of loyalty and support for a Democratic President, will they be what ails the Democratic Party?”
I’m not so certain as to plant myself on either side of this argument, but you raised an interesting hypothetical here that I hadn’t considered.
If African-Americans made up 36% – 38% of the Democratic Electorate, and the Democrats pandered to them by nominating unqualified hacks based on the color of their skin and making Affirmative Action a central plank of their party platform (aka abortion and gay marriage). Imagine then, after a disastrous two-term administration, that the African-American electorate comes out even more vociferously in the next election for a similar or worse candidate. The Democrats would be ridden out of Washington on a rail, and African Americans would rightfully get the brunt of the blame.
I’ll just succinctly recap my lengthy point from the previous post: the current GOP and the Christian whackjobs are united in disdain and hostility toward science and facts (and policy based upon them). That’s bad for everybody: the country, our politics, the GOP, the conservative movement, and unwittingly to themselves, those same whackjobs.
But I’ll leave you to parse out the causality, necessity, and so forth.
Blaming the religious right for the Bush Administration while ignoring the neocons and others is like blaming the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm while ignoring the pigs.
[...] – The debate between Daniel Larison and Andrew Sullivan over the role of evangelicals in the Republican Party seems pretty relevant to [...]
We could argue all day about terms like “Christianist” or “theocrat”, but what does matter is the powerful influence religious conservatives have had on the way the GOP tends to even think about politics now. In a nutshell, in most areas the GOP puts forward the notion that real-world compromises, which is what politics has always been about, are a betrayal of some kind of theological doctrine that cannot even be questioned. This is a religious influence that has been greatly strengthened religious conservatives have permeated the party.
Now you are quite correct that there’s another very dangerous mode of thinking that is popular in the party, you call it “Caesarism”, but we could more accurately say it’s the authoritarian neocon “commander-in-chief” mentality. Again, the idea is to find someone whose judgment is unquestionable, who can be relied on to preserve the party’s principles the way a Pope would be expected to preserve the catechism, or the Nicene Creed, etc. This is not really a political approach, it’s a religious one, which is why it probably isn’t proving very successful. It hamstrings the GOP, and makes their primaries a form of “holier-than-thou” contest – not alway just for religiousity, but for “who is most like Reagan”. One could summarize in one word: emotionalism. This may always succeed in arousing the faithful, but as with Palin, it often puts of the majority.
Which is why GOP political campaigns seem more like tent revival meetings aimed at conversion, rather than political appeals aimed at persuasion. I might remind you that the GOP didn’t always used to be that way. One simply can’t characterize EIsenhower, Nixon, or Ford or their parties in this manner. Rather, the GOP always used to be the sensibly-minded business party. As I’ve mentioned before, we can trace this development directly to Roe v Wade, and the way that cause has energized and motivated religious conservatives to become active in politics. There are real consequences to pursuing causes so deeply rooted in religious doctrine and belief. The problem is, the cause is so deep there are no conservatives of any stripe who would suggest it has been a mistake, much less one that needs to be corrected. And therein lies the tragic nature of the fall from Grace.
Wow, I need some sleep. That was one sloppy post, but I hope you get the gist of it.
I have a question – if the Bush admistration’s evangelical-oriented moves were merely symbolic, what would non-symbolic support look like? Keeping in mind that the evangelicals’ primary goal, outlawing abortion, is not within reach. Because off the top of my head, I can think of a lot of actions taken by Bush that seem to be more than merely symbolic: fighting AIDS in Africa, using the FBI to vigorously go after porn producers, anti-contraceptive initiatives, giving government money to church charities, fighting the human slave trade, anti-stem cells, promoting bible literalism, etc. etc.
Conradg, maybe sloppy, but nicely put. Unfortunately, not only have they lost their way and fallen from grace, but they’ve lost their honor in business with the belief that if they can make the sale, no matter the shoddy product, then they have the right to make it; the duty to maximize shareholder profit, no matter the cost to the environment or workers.
Grace in business would be a return to real integrity and ethics in business (including environmental and social ethics). That would give the GOP something the stand for, something to be proud of once again. And it might give all those 20-somethings, who’ve no reason to ever vote Republican, who’ve been sold to all their lives, some consideration in the voting booth for the GOP.
Else, they’re a dead party walking. Because they stand too much for central authority, god and big business, not enough for everyday people. I would mourn that, my great-great-great uncle was Hannibal Hamlin’s secretary. But not too much, I’ve voted Dem all my life, for since Reagan, the party’s lost it’s way.
Peace.