God Is My Running Mate

On Saturday, Mike Huckabee told a cheering crowd that he’d majored in miracles, not math. With all the religious rhetoric being thrown around this election season, we voters need a guide to understanding the volatile relationship between religion and politics in America. Fortunately for us, Dr. Jacques Berlinerblau, Associate Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown, has written the informative and often humorous Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics. I spoke with him about church, state, and of course, the Jews.

Why is the Bible so important to American politics? Is its value symbolic or substantive?

Nowadays the Bible is important because it is held dear by a very large, very influential and very well organized constituency of voters knows as Evangelical Christians. They comprise roughly a quarter of the electorate and symbolic invocation of the Good Book does get their attention. The problem is that they are no longer satisfied with mere symbolic invocation. Many want to see the text used as a substantive resource for crafting domestic and foreign policy. That’s not always easy to do when there’s a Wall of Separation between Church and State. Just ask the Bush administration.

Huckabee: Strummin' that bass for Jesus You refer to two kinds of scriptural citation in politics, the "cite and run" and "the generic." Could you explain the difference?

In the “cite-and-run,” a politician cites one meager biblical verse—-recall that your typical non-Jewish Bible has over 30,000 verses—-and insinuates that the one sentence in question somehow corresponds to his or her policy initiative. No explanation or elaboration is given and that refusal to deal with the complexity of Scripture constitutes the “run” portion of the operation. To give an example: of late the phrase “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) has been making the rounds in the anti-poverty rhetoric of Huckabee and Obama.

The “generic” requires even less serious thought. Dispensing with the burden of providing prooftexts, the politician in question simply aligns himself or herself with the entire Bible. Like when Tom DeLay claimed that he was working on behalf of “biblical worldview.”

You point out that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – both highly polarizing presidents – managed to unite America at critical moments through their mastery of the “Scripture game.” How did they do it?

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush cited biblical verses that celebrated grand, if not vague, American values such as courage (Psalm 23:4) and love of God (Romans 8:38-39). He was wise enough not to get too “Christ-ey” on a diverse nation. In other words, the God he was invoking was an ecumenical deity, a healer of all suffering peoples. Clinton never faced a crisis of that magnitude, but speaking of a “New Covenant” in his 1995 State of the Union address was quite clever.

Ecumenicism: Bush admires a Judeo-Christian ornamentHow is Mike Huckabee overreaching with his Biblical rhetoric, or “overthumping” as you put it?

He was just cruising along making those Chuck Norris videos and stationing subliminal crosses in his campaign ads when disaster struck: he totally pissed off secular America. Throughout the campaign he made a few remarks which would not indicate a High Jeffersonian appreciation for the idea of Church/State separation. But his biggest blunder by far was claiming that the constitution needed to be amended in accordance with God’s standards. In so doing, he motivated about half a million secular bloggers to share their thoughts about this “Christian leader.” Worse yet, many religious folks thought he had gone too far. That remark will haunt him throughout his career.

In the book, you discuss the fact that only 17 percent of Democrats profess no religious affiliation, meaning 83 percent are believers. Given that statistic, why has the Democratic party allowed itself to be pegged as the “secular” party?

The statistics are open to interpretation, but it is safe to say the overwhelming majority of registered Democrats would describe themselves as religious in some way. That’s not widely known. Chalk that up to cunning of GOP strategists and the cluelessness of their counterparts. As early as the ‘80s, Republicans figured out that a large segment of the electorate was uncomfortable with the Big Secularism that predominated in the courts, public schools, professorate, entertainment industries, and elite media. The Republicans understood this. The Democrats who ran the Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry campaigns did not. Barack Obama, incidentally, is in the know. He is one Democrat who is ready and able to radically re-think his party’s conception of the role of religion in the public square. And what he comes up with might not make secularists happy.

Jesus says: "Barack is my homeboy"Indeed, in contrast to John Kerry and other Democrats’ recent displays of Biblical tone-deafness, you praise both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for having good “Scripture games.” How do their styles differ, and whose do you think would be more effective in the general election?

Obama is endowed with unique oratorical gifts—everything from the tone of his voice, to his sense of timing, to his understanding of how to leave a little dramatic silence. I, for one, have enjoyed few things more this election season than watching those kids standing behind him at his rallies undergoing “Obamaphoria”—feelings of giddy euphoria precipitated by his winged words.

He’s a much better orator than Senator Clinton (and probably any other politician of his generation). But Hillary’s handlers know what they are doing. They never make the mistake of asking her to out-emote Obama, or engage him in a “preach-off.” She stays within herself. Just plays the pretty notes—as the jazz musicians like to say.

Obama’s rhetorical style would certainly work better than Clinton’s in a general election. But he’s so polished that he will always be vulnerable to an old puritanical prejudice. Namely, that what glitters, that what is aesthetically pleasing, is somehow lacking substance, misguided, even dangerous to the nation’s health. In short, the guy from Harvard who taught at the University of Chicago will (oddly enough) be attacked for being all fluff! That’s politics in America.

Agents of intolerance: John Mccain and Jerry FalwellIn light of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's virtually nonexistant “Scripture game” and his past skirmishes with prominent evangelical figures, do you think 2008 offers an opening for the Democrats to close the gap with religious voters?

Absolutely. You know, it’s strange: on many issues of great concern to conservative Christians (abortion, national security, showing the love to Intelligent Design curricula) McCain delivers the goods. But as I noted in Thumpin’ It, he has this longstanding history of personal enmity with their leadership. I once suggested in my blog for The Washington Post that McCain and conservative Evangelicals would benefit from couples counseling. When the senator from Arizona says ours is a “Christian nation” (as he did this past fall) what Evangelicals should hear him saying is: “please don’t accuse me of having fathered an illegitimate child” (as some unidentified Bush operatives famously did in 2000 in South Carolina).

That being said, a candidate like Obama would steal Evangelical votes from McCain and even McCain-Huckabee in large Kansas-sized chunks.

Speaking of which, you discuss a growing rift in the evangelical movement due to the rise of progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis and the evangelical environmentalists. What is the state of progressive evangelicalism and how will it affect the 2008 election?

This is the big question: to what degree will Evangelicals behave the way they did in 2004. Nearly 80% of them voted for George W. Bush. That’s 80% of a quarter of the electorate! But I don’t think that will happen again in 2008. For starters, progressive Evangelicals are finding their voice. And a new generation of younger evangelicals is rising that doesn’t seem eager to focus solely (and obsessively) on abortion and gays. This is a great opportunity for Democrats. Remember: they don’t have to win Evangelicals—they just have to stanch the Kerry-like hemorrhaging they endured in 2004. That is eminently doable.

The book focuses primarily on how the “Scripture game” plays to Christian Americans. How does it play to Jewish Americans? Are the rules any different?

With the possible exception of certain Orthodox groups, my sense is that most Jews would prefer that Bible-thumping politicians put a cork in it. Public, state-sponsored displays of religion tend not, historically, to be good for a minority group once aptly described by Max Weber as a “pariah people.” Even when Christian politicians invoke the Old Testament they are usually citing prophetic texts and Psalms that they read in a deeply Christological manner. So Jews aren’t about to respond to that with cries of “yesher koach!” My guess is that most Jews might be happier with a few verses from Leviticus. Or maybe some groovy, esoteric Midrash.

Banned in Leviticus: Lieberman and Bush play tonsil hockeyYou criticize Joe Lieberman for relying too heavily on overtly religious rhetoric in the 2000 campaign. Lieberman's identity as an Orthodox Jew presented something of a unique situation, but how do you think future Jewish national politicians of any denomination should handle their “Scripture game”? Do you feel they have an extra burden on their shoulders to assuage America’s majority Christian population’s possible doubts?

The tactical problem was not that Lieberman played the religious card, but that he played it in a way that made him look like he was inauthentic, a panderer. Jews who heard him on the campaign trail were probably saying things like: “Edna, why is this shomer shabbas fellow citing the gospels?” (I can just imagine what Christians were asking themselves). The ADL, as we all know, was asking a somewhat similar question. A future Jewish candidate for high office would be advised to cite the Hebrew Bible in a modest and subtle manner. Maybe he or she could throw in a little Rabbi Akiva. Conservative Christian folks love that authentic Jewish stuff.

Yes, Jews have an extra burden. This faith and values game is played by rules that were created and favor conservative Protestants. Jews, Catholics, Mormons, are all going to have a hard time winning with these handicaps. Wiccan candidates for the presidency have it pretty tough too.

What if a Jewish politician made “Hava Nagila” his campaign theme song, would that help him win over mainstream America?

No, but it would set a hell of a lot of American toes a’ tappin’.

Jewish voters only represent around 1% of the electorate, yet every candidate worries about the Jewish vote. Is that because Jews control all of the media or because they control all of the banks?

That's a ridiculous question for me to answer. Obviously it's because they control all of the banks AND all of the media.