Dean and the Fundamentalists

September 22, 2003, 8:43 a.m. Dean and the Fundamentalists What the doctor gets away with.

Imagine a major presidential candidate saying: "I want my country back! We want our country back! I am tired of being divided! I don't want to listen to the priests and rabbis anymore."

Across the political spectrum, people would immediately denounce that candidate as a bigot. Pundits would draw comparisons to the Know-Nothings. There would be calls for an apology, if not a withdrawal from the race. And the words would haunt the candidate forever.

Now substitute "fundamentalist preachers" for "priests and rabbis," and you have a verbatim quotation from Howard Dean's speech to the California Democratic state convention last March. It was not a one-time slip. With some variations in the wording, attacks on "fundamentalist preachers" have been part of his stump speeches ever since.

His defenders would deny the charge, saying that he is not referring to all fundamentalist Christians or their pastors, but only to a few right-wing activists. But Dr. Dean is an intelligent and articulate man. If he just meant to assail specific individuals, he could easily find the words. Again, picture a candidate repeatedly attacking "priests and rabbis" without qualification. Would any serious person doubt that he was pandering to anti-Christianity and anti-Semitism?

Dr. Dean's partisans might claim that "fundamentalist preachers" differ from other members of the clergy because so many of them are pushing a political agenda.

Such a defense would not stand a moment's scrutiny. American religious leaders have played an active role in political issues since colonial days. In the years before the Civil War, supporters of slavery complained that abolitionist clergymen were trying to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. In the 1960s, segregationists made the same case against the priests and rabbis who marched with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

In short, Dr. Dean's comments are indefensible. He is stoking prejudice against fundamentalist Christians, and he deserves condemnation. So why aren't editorial pages taking him to task? Why aren't investigative reporters asking why he has denounced other Americans on account of their religious beliefs?

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested the answer earlier this year, when he acknowledged that "nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch" with conservative Christians. While journalists are not intentionally turning a blind eye to anti-fundamentalist bigotry, they overlook remarks that would otherwise set off their prejudice-detectors.

Meanwhile, Dr. Dean's attacks on fundamentalist preachers continue to trigger cheers from his supporters. Apparently, many of them share his prejudice.

In the longer run, though, Dr. Dean's venom will hurt his chances of winning the White House. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of American adults agree with the statement: "The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." Biblical literalism is not a complete definition of fundamentalism. But the 35-percent figure roughly corresponds to the share of the electorate who would take personal offense at Dr. Dean's attacks.

And that figure may include a number of black voters. African Americans have liberal political beliefs but many adhere to a conservative interpretation of the Bible. Perhaps that's one reason why Dean rallies are whiter than the Stockholm chapter of the Barry Manilow Fan Club.

Even worse for Dr. Dean is that many non-fundamentalist Americans would disapprove of his tactics. They might not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, and they may disagree with the political positions of many fundamentalist preachers. But they don't like it when politicians threaten their fellow citizens with secular excommunication.

— John J. Pitney, Jr. is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

While journalists are not intentionally turning a blind eye to anti-fundamentalist bigotry...

Sure they are. It suprises me that the author would not make this obvious connection. They turn a blind eye because they agree with it.

I don't want to pick nits, but I think that you and the author are making the same point. There is a cognitive dissonance in the journalists worldview. They don't comprehend that as a probably because they necessarily agree with it. I'm not saying you are wrong and the other is right, rather, you both are right.

I only make this point because it isn't just with religion that liberal journalists do this. It is with nearly every issue. It is, to use a famous phrase from Rush Limbaugh, the "natural order of things". Simply put, this is what bias is: I agree with X --> "Report" about X it in that light.

Also, it is interesting to think about how this reality is necessarily the reason for such duplicity on liberals parts (journalist included). It is the essence of the "do as I say, not as I do". In their mind, it is ok to bash Christians just because they're Christians, but it isn't ok for a Christian to be even weary of a Muslim because there is plenty of evidence of open hostility.

Their "prejudice" meters, as the author called it, go off when a white man something simple (and factual), "All of the men who hijacked the airplanes on 9/11 were Arab and Muslim, so I think we should be concerned about Arab men. Maybe profiling isn't so bad." That is a pretty logical and bland statement. Cries of racism and bigotry abound. If, on the other hand, a Muslim says, "The imperialist United States has caused the suffering of my people and for that every American should have their throat slit and be disembowled", this seems ok?

This is the complicity that Dean and media have with the terrorists. They pass off the true hatred as legitimate, reasoned thought and ridicule the legitimate, reasoned thought as being hateful. Their world is simple upside down.

Personally, I find Dean the most electable of the dozen dodos in the Democratic Presidential Candidate Caucas. That's not saying much, but....

And, with the exception of Benjamin Harrison (analog: Her Majesty Hillary! Clinton), every president elected by defeating an incumbent has served as a governor. That leaves us with Dean and Graham. Lieberman just won't get the nomination; Graham appears to suffer from some sort of mental illness, delusional paranoia or something. Dean at least appears sane, and he does have every bit of his Vermont record to tout. Graham's Florida record is hopelessly lost to history as his home state, wherein he is wildly unpopular, reaps the benefits of the Bush & Bush economy.

As for the rest, Traficant's in jail, LaRouche is banned from receiving delegats because he's too scatterbrained to fill out a voter-registration application, and Kucinich's greatest accomplishment was bankrupting Cleveland. Moseley-Braun, however nice, isn't catching, and she's too inexperienced for the position. Lieberman is preceived too strongly as a loser among Democrats; he didn't work last time, and he isn't taking popular positions. He might be a factor if he runs as an independent or switches parties to run in 2008.

Sharpton's never held elective nor appointive (civilian) office; neither has Clark. Only four presidents had never held elective or appointive office before their elections: George Washington, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, and Dwight David Eisenhower. Notice a pattern: all were military generals who devised and executed risky but brilliant strategies to win difficult wars, becoming war heroes in the process. Clark, too, was a general, well...sorta. He did stage the Kosovo war--on false premises for a politically-motivated president--and technically won, but he never developed a coherent strategy or put troops in harm's way. He certainly didn't come close to heroism; he's a virtual unknown. Even if he gets the nomination, he heretofore appears incapable of formulating noncontradictory, coherent stands on issues, especially terrorism. Any help from Clinton, moreover, will poison him more than it helps him. As for Sharpton, he panders to one-eight of the population at most and isn't known for his leadership capacity.

That leaves us with John Kerry and Dick Gephardt. The latter is about 0-10 in national elections, whether for president or speaker of the house. Even so, he's never faced (successfully) an electorate broader than partisan Democrats, whether in the Congress (for minority leadership) or in his own almost certainly gerrymandered Missouri district. Kerry may be heir to a ketchup fortune, but his appeals to French-speaking and French-looking and French-loving voters won't help him in the critical states of the intermountain West, High Plains, and the South. These states (all of which went for Bush in 2000 except New Mexico) now account for almost enough electoral votes to give Bush four more years. All else he'll need are four strongly Republican states: Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri. He won't play well in the "squeaker" states of the upper midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Iowa) that Gore barely took in 2000 either. It'll be a close one, but Bush will win.

As for Dean, he may not be well-known, but as governor of Vermont, he can point into his record with something for everybody. He can say how well-off farmers were, how he covered his citizens' health care, how great Vermont is, how smart he is (as a doctor), how everyone always misunderestimated him. He had Burlington for the urban voters too. Although some will say that Vermont is small, most people probably won't use that against him; after all, he can't become governor of Texas because--well, he lives in Vermont. And he'll counter that as governor of Vermont, he had the same powers--in fact, more--than George W. Bush had as Texas governor. He can energize the base in a way that Gore never could; he will take his home state--he is popular there, or so it seems. He can use more moderate positions to pander to "swing" voters and independents than those he's chosen to highlight now. His foreign policy is clear, if wrongheaded.

I see Dean as MORE potentially electable than anyone else. That doesn't mean he'll win, but the race should be exciting. He does need to work on getting Hispanic support (to win New Mexico) and campaign hard in those Midwestern states, Washington, and Oregon. He'll need the traditional Democratic voter-fraud machine going full blast in Saint Louis, Portland, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Des Moines, and Minneapolis. I know that the polls right now see Dean as less likely to beat Bush in a head-to-head race, but he hasn't started carrying his obvious passion to independents and liberal Republicans yet. He's dangerous--and because he's a Vermonter--armed.

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