Brady On Media
Pat Robertson Redux
02.02.06, 6:00 AM ET
Each time the Rev. Pat Robertson mounts the considerable pulpit of his daily TV variety show, The 700 Club, to announce that God is about to punish someone with whom Robertson disagrees, old Marines ask, "Can you believe he’s shooting off his mouth again?"
These are usually Marine officers of Korean War vintage who served with Pat half a century ago when we were all young lieutenants heading to the wars. They know the Rev and are not at all reluctant to comment, as they did when Robertson used his show (which Nielsen gives an average daily audience of 828,000) to urge we assassinate bothersome Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, when he blamed terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. abortion rate, when he warned God might punish Pennsylvania for a school board that approved of Darwin, and, most recently, when he suggested Ariel Sharon’s stroke resulted from his "dividing God's land" of Israel.
A New York Times headline read: "Even Pat Robertson's friends are wondering…."
I can assure his friends that Pat hasn't flipped out or is suddenly feeling his age. The man began talking too much 55 years ago. I've alluded briefly to this on CSPAN2 and in a book published last May by St. Martin’s Press, The Scariest Place in the World, while another Marine officer and nine-term Republican congressman from California named Pete McCloskey devoted chapters to it in a self-published book called The Taking of Hill 610.
In January 1951, the battered 1st Marine Division had just survived a deadly battle against the Chinese up at the Chosin Reservoir in the wintry mountains of North Korea, and replacements were desperately needed. A young 2nd Lt. Marion G. "Pat" Robertson, the son of a United States senator, freshly trained at Quantico, shipped out for Korea aboard the troopship General J.C. Breckenridge as one of the 71 Marine officers and 1,900 enlisted men of the 5th Replacement Draft.
During the voyage, in wardroom bull sessions, Pat let it be known that "my daddy," the senator, would intervene to win his son a transfer to Japan. The other young officers sloughed this off as idle boasting, but sure enough, Pat and a handful of others (included as cover?) were posted to Japan while their comrades went into battle in Korea. And when one of the others, who truly wanted to get in the fighting, later volunteered all of them for Korean duty, Pat ended up at division headquarters (a relatively safe posting) as "liquor officer" and courier, traveling back and forth to Japan.
Cut to election year 1988. Touting himself not only as a man of God but as a Marine "combat" vet, Pat was doing very well in the Republican presidential primaries, with Super Tuesday coming up on March 8. But as some of the old "my daddy" stories of 1951 leaked out, and were talked about in Congress and in columns by Jack Anderson and Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Robertson had to respond. He sued for libel one of his tormentors, McCloskey, a Marine officer of Pat's class but one who had actually fought in Korea, earning the Navy Cross, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.
His decision to sue would destroy Robertson's campaign. Until then, pundits were predicting he'd be a convention kingmaker, if not the nominee. But as decorated officers lined up to testify under oath for McCloskey, a federal judge, Joyce Hens Green, set a trial date of March 8, the same day as the big batch of primaries. Robertson was faced with the prospect of Marine officers parading into court as witnesses against him. The judge gave Robertson a choice: withdraw the libel suit against McCloskey or come to court to face those hostile witnesses.
On Monday morning, 24 hours before Super Tuesday's vote, Pat caved and withdrew his lawsuit. Green dismissed the case, and Pat agreed to pay McCloskey's costs. The following day his presidential dream died in the ballot boxes of 19 voting states.
Pete McCloskey is for fellow Marines a heroic figure. Out of office, he remains a Republican, teaches at Santa Clara University, and writes and lives with his wife Nancy in Woodside, Calif. In the book he sent me, Pete wrote movingly of Pat's tragedy:
"It's really rather a shame. Had Robertson survived a rifle platoon leader's experience…his manifest charm and leadership ability might have made him a great political leader, possibly even allowed him to reach the White House."
But the man talked too much.