Faith and media criticism.
I linked to this Washington Monthly piece by Mark Murray yesterday while commenting on Tim Kaine's anti-death-penalty stance as the icing on his gubernatorial victory. Truth be told, though, I didn't much care for the article or how what it has to say about the role of faith in public life or as a potential weapon for Democrats to wield against their alleged secularism. Murray's thesis is essentially that Kaine's religosity is a boon for him and the party because it sounds "real", as opposed to when more secular Dems like Howard Dean try to talk up religion and end up sticking Job in the wrong Testament.
I don't mean to pick on Murray (who, for all I know is a terrific journalist) or the Washington Monthly (especially after last month's superb cover story by Ben Wallace-Wells.) But Murray embraces a type and style of political argument in his piece that I find way too common and not very enlightening, and about which I feel the need to grouse from time to time. To begin with, what "seems real" is highly subjective. Murray himself muddies the waters when he suggests that, at times, Kaine's religious enthusiasm "is almost too much" (the article was written before the election). The line between taking a sincere religious commitment too far rhetorically and making a weaker faith-orientation try to sound more than it is (as Murray accuses Dean of doing) strikes me as one that's hard to draw. Kaine's religion-talk was also biographical-talk, heavily referenced to his work as a missionary in Honduras. Playing your biography for votes is always tricky. Think of Kerry's "band of brothers". Does any serious commentator really think Kerry's heavy biographical grounding in his history as a soldier was "insincere"? Does it really matter? Sincerity and effectiveness are not the same thing.
And "sincere" itself can be a slippery term. For instance, Kaine used references to his faith and his faith-steeped life both as a way of justifying his politics and as a way of distancing himself from the national party, particularly as epitomized by its most recent leader. Murray takes Kaine's gratuitous "Hi, I like to windsurf" comment -- explaining how certain other Democrats approach their biographies -- at face value. But this was actually a fairly common bit of chicanery indulged by Kaine during the campaign. I don't mean to be judgemental: whatever produces a red-state win is good enough for me. But it's unfortunate that governors in training still have to lie about national party leaders to keep themselves viable among southern voters (not least because it limits their own future national options). Nor was Kaine's Kerry-baiting the best example of artless religious "sincerity".
To confirm his arguments about religion as a winner, Murray resorts to the standard trope of comparing Dems Who Won (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter) to Dems Who Lost (Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry). The problem with this tactic -- this very, very common tactic -- is that you can use it to make essentially any argument about successful politicking. And it seems to me that by doing so, pundits often miss subtle distinctions and interesting contradictions in the records of the candidates they cover, with every strategy justified or refuted by the election outcome. For instance, Murray repeatedly holds up Howard Dean as an example of an overly-secular, unconvincingly faithful Democrat. And I agree that Dean's secularism would likely have hurt him in the 2004 general election had he made it that far. But does anyone really think that's why he lost Iowa? Actually, a more interesting aspect of Dean's religion wasn't his secularism so much as his interdenominationalism: he converted from Episcopalianism to Congregationalism, attended Temple with his Jewish wife and celebrated both Christmas and Passover. In fact, interdenominationalism is actually a big part of the Democratic campaigning canon, a way of combining values-talk with cultural pluralism. In 2000, for instance, the Gore campaign made a joke of the "fun new days off" you'd get for electing a Christian-Jewish ticket. There's also an interesting parallel here with Kaine's own rhetorical cashing in of his Catholic bonafides in Protestant Virginia.
Which isn't to say there's not an exciting story about Kaine's God-tinged victory. There is. Like Amy Sullivan, I think Kaine's amazingly forthright opposition to capital punishment in a southern state, and his opponent's flailing failure to make it a minus for him, is remarkable: possibly as an indication of shifting social mores on the subject, but more concretely as an example of the power of a convincing narrative ("sanctity of life") to overcome the need for populist social-issues pandering. But what's exciting for progressives isn't that Kaine talked God to win votes and avoided sounding insincere like various Dean-like secularists of times past. Nor is it that Kaine validated the DLC-ish theory that Democrats must blur social distinctions to make conservative voters hear their economic message. What's exciting is that Kaine talked God to explicitly advance a progressive socio-cultural position we'd expect him to be punished for in a red state. (True, Kaine is also anti-choice but he wasn't forced to turn his personal opposition to abortion into a governance issue.)
This is the real potential of a Democratic embrace of religion: that faith, particularly interdenominational faith, can be used to advance ideas like redistribution, pluaralism, a more compassionate justice system to a class of voters who are generally skeptical of Democrats. Kaine gave us one small, successful example, but it's a trick that's been tried before at the national level, with the same sort of mixed success that almost any political strategy will have. We heard it in Jimmy Carter's "We Shall Overcome" moment at the '76 convention in Madison Square Garden; in Bill Clinton's "New Covenant" campaign speech in '92; in Joe Lieberman's faith-based justification of environmentalism in 2000; in John Kerry's savvy and sensitive discussion of Catholicism and abortion at the 2004 debates. Pundits shouldn't want to reduce this topic to a feckless debate over who "sounds real" in swearing to his faith. Not everybody is going to have Kaine's biography, and not everybody who does have a Kaine-like biography is going to be able to milk it effectively. (Nor, as Ezra point out, should they have to.) What's interesting and unusual here is a sign of what Christianity and religious rhetoric can offer to liberal politics, not more of the same-old same-old about what liberal politicians have to do and be to appeal to Christians.
I don't mean to pick on Murray (who, for all I know is a terrific journalist) or the Washington Monthly (especially after last month's superb cover story by Ben Wallace-Wells.) But Murray embraces a type and style of political argument in his piece that I find way too common and not very enlightening, and about which I feel the need to grouse from time to time. To begin with, what "seems real" is highly subjective. Murray himself muddies the waters when he suggests that, at times, Kaine's religious enthusiasm "is almost too much" (the article was written before the election). The line between taking a sincere religious commitment too far rhetorically and making a weaker faith-orientation try to sound more than it is (as Murray accuses Dean of doing) strikes me as one that's hard to draw. Kaine's religion-talk was also biographical-talk, heavily referenced to his work as a missionary in Honduras. Playing your biography for votes is always tricky. Think of Kerry's "band of brothers". Does any serious commentator really think Kerry's heavy biographical grounding in his history as a soldier was "insincere"? Does it really matter? Sincerity and effectiveness are not the same thing.
And "sincere" itself can be a slippery term. For instance, Kaine used references to his faith and his faith-steeped life both as a way of justifying his politics and as a way of distancing himself from the national party, particularly as epitomized by its most recent leader. Murray takes Kaine's gratuitous "Hi, I like to windsurf" comment -- explaining how certain other Democrats approach their biographies -- at face value. But this was actually a fairly common bit of chicanery indulged by Kaine during the campaign. I don't mean to be judgemental: whatever produces a red-state win is good enough for me. But it's unfortunate that governors in training still have to lie about national party leaders to keep themselves viable among southern voters (not least because it limits their own future national options). Nor was Kaine's Kerry-baiting the best example of artless religious "sincerity".
To confirm his arguments about religion as a winner, Murray resorts to the standard trope of comparing Dems Who Won (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter) to Dems Who Lost (Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry). The problem with this tactic -- this very, very common tactic -- is that you can use it to make essentially any argument about successful politicking. And it seems to me that by doing so, pundits often miss subtle distinctions and interesting contradictions in the records of the candidates they cover, with every strategy justified or refuted by the election outcome. For instance, Murray repeatedly holds up Howard Dean as an example of an overly-secular, unconvincingly faithful Democrat. And I agree that Dean's secularism would likely have hurt him in the 2004 general election had he made it that far. But does anyone really think that's why he lost Iowa? Actually, a more interesting aspect of Dean's religion wasn't his secularism so much as his interdenominationalism: he converted from Episcopalianism to Congregationalism, attended Temple with his Jewish wife and celebrated both Christmas and Passover. In fact, interdenominationalism is actually a big part of the Democratic campaigning canon, a way of combining values-talk with cultural pluralism. In 2000, for instance, the Gore campaign made a joke of the "fun new days off" you'd get for electing a Christian-Jewish ticket. There's also an interesting parallel here with Kaine's own rhetorical cashing in of his Catholic bonafides in Protestant Virginia.
Which isn't to say there's not an exciting story about Kaine's God-tinged victory. There is. Like Amy Sullivan, I think Kaine's amazingly forthright opposition to capital punishment in a southern state, and his opponent's flailing failure to make it a minus for him, is remarkable: possibly as an indication of shifting social mores on the subject, but more concretely as an example of the power of a convincing narrative ("sanctity of life") to overcome the need for populist social-issues pandering. But what's exciting for progressives isn't that Kaine talked God to win votes and avoided sounding insincere like various Dean-like secularists of times past. Nor is it that Kaine validated the DLC-ish theory that Democrats must blur social distinctions to make conservative voters hear their economic message. What's exciting is that Kaine talked God to explicitly advance a progressive socio-cultural position we'd expect him to be punished for in a red state. (True, Kaine is also anti-choice but he wasn't forced to turn his personal opposition to abortion into a governance issue.)
This is the real potential of a Democratic embrace of religion: that faith, particularly interdenominational faith, can be used to advance ideas like redistribution, pluaralism, a more compassionate justice system to a class of voters who are generally skeptical of Democrats. Kaine gave us one small, successful example, but it's a trick that's been tried before at the national level, with the same sort of mixed success that almost any political strategy will have. We heard it in Jimmy Carter's "We Shall Overcome" moment at the '76 convention in Madison Square Garden; in Bill Clinton's "New Covenant" campaign speech in '92; in Joe Lieberman's faith-based justification of environmentalism in 2000; in John Kerry's savvy and sensitive discussion of Catholicism and abortion at the 2004 debates. Pundits shouldn't want to reduce this topic to a feckless debate over who "sounds real" in swearing to his faith. Not everybody is going to have Kaine's biography, and not everybody who does have a Kaine-like biography is going to be able to milk it effectively. (Nor, as Ezra point out, should they have to.) What's interesting and unusual here is a sign of what Christianity and religious rhetoric can offer to liberal politics, not more of the same-old same-old about what liberal politicians have to do and be to appeal to Christians.
2 Comments:
I agree that it's exciting that Kaine used his faith to advance some good progressive ideas, but I don't that's the best lesson liberals can learn from this. There's a political element to this, as well as a policy element. E. J. Dionne, in his column, quoted a Kaine adviser who said that when focus groups were shown Kaine expressing his faith,
"Almost to a person, they would say that he must be a moderate or a conservative, and that he couldn't be a liberal."
Liberal intellectuals have a reputation for disparaging people who hold strong religious convictions. This is unfortunate, but it is also unfortunately deserved. For Kaine, a fortunate byproduct of his willingness to express his faith is that it also means that he comes across as not being condescending to people who go to church. It means that he can connect with people of faith. There are people who use strong religious convictions to advocate narrow-minded conservative positions. But there are also people who are normal and open-minded who are equally religious. Lots of liberals have grabbed onto the stereotype that religious conviction = narrow-minded, and this has alienated many people. Even if people agree with a candidate on economic issues, they will vote against them if they feel that they are being talked down to.
Good comment, johnteqp. Thanks.
I find it ironic. As a secular liberal, I found a lot of stuff Kaine said during the campaign insulting and condescending... to secular liberals. But it's also true that Kilgore and company attacked Kaine over and over as "more liberal than Warner", a "traditional liberal" etc and that he weathered the storm without going notably more to the right during the campaign (to the extent I followed, which wasn't exactly like a hawk). I wonder how much of this is just terminology and how much of it really has to do with policy positions? That's one thing about capital punishment: it's a tangible position people have a tangible opinion on, as opposed to generic senses about "X is too liberal".
Also, I don't vouch for all liberal intellecutals -- and don't deny that stereotypes about narrowminded Christian conservatives abound (not that there's not some truth) -- but liberal politicians and Dem party spokespeople almost never insult people's faith or people of faith. Most of them use faith strategies themselves. So I'm not sure how much the Dems' secular reputation is "unfortunately deserved". Though clearly it is something that can be effectively milked.
Post a Comment
<< Home