News
By Roger Abramson
After mediocre performances in the two election cycles following its political Big Bang in 1994, a chastened Republican Party took measure of itself and discovered that a lot of Americans thought Republicans were, to use a highly technical political science term, jerks. Jerks, as in listen-to-the-rich jerks, ignore-the-poor jerks and impeach-the-President-for-amusement jerks. It didn't help matters that this perception was—at least to some degree—true. It therefore dawned on Republicans that the best way to regain political momentum would be to blunt that perception. Thus, Newt Gingrich and his federal government shutdowns went out, and George W. Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" came in, resulting in a win by a nose in 2000 for the GOP and more substantial victories in 2002 and 2004. Which means that the Democrats' turn to take stock of themselves has finally come.
The realization: many Americans think that Democrats are skeptical of, if not downright hostile to, religion, particularly the Christian variety. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that, well, many Democrats do come across as, at best, unsympathetic to the concerns of practicing Christians, and, at worst, downright antagonistic toward them.
This has especially hurt Democrats in the South, where religious fervor is the strongest, and the Tennessee Democratic Party has seemingly taken it upon itself to correct the record. Witness, for instance, the first-ever edition of the Tennessee Democrat, a magazine published by the state party that hit mailboxes this spring. The lead story in the 12-page mini-mag is an essay on being a Christian in politics, drawn from a book by state Sen. Roy Herron (a onetime United Methodist minister), which concludes with a line you might find in any Focus on the Family publication: "The question, then, is not, how can a Christian be in politics? The question is, how could a Christian not be in politics?" Thank you, Dr. Dobson. Congressman Lincoln Davis also chimes in with his thoughts on "faith in politics" and even Mr. Secularity himself, Gov. Phil Bredesen, whose Tennessee Blue Book biography doesn't even reference his having a religious affiliation, makes it a point to justify his $25 million expenditure on a state pre-K program with a proverb from the Old Testament.
But that's not all. At last weekend's Tennessee Democratic Leadership Summit, party chairman Bob Tuke talked a lot about "values" and went after Bush's "ownership society" philosophy, calling it "un-Christian" since we do not actually "own" anything, but are rather stewards of anything God has seen fit to give us. Thank you, Dave Ramsey. Keynote speaker, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, was then introduced as a fellow who goes home every night to be with his family. (Side note: looking back over 17 years and three presidential administrations with scandals aplenty, the fact that this generally decent guy lost his bid for the presidency because of a few poorly plagiarized speeches seems positively quaint.) And, dozens of copies of Herron's book were for sale up front.
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A cynic might say that this is just the worst kind of pandering. And maybe it is. But pandering, like spending thousands of dollars of special interest money, unleashing gobs of negative advertising and all of the other things that give cynical types fits, usually works. That's why politicians are always doing it. The Democratic leadership in Tennessee has obviously gotten what Lieutenant Columbo used to call a clue, figuring out that Christians of all denominational stripes make up a huge chunk of the voting bloc around here, and Democrats aggravate these people at their political peril. (Of course, it could be also that they're completely sincere and earnest.) It wouldn't hurt their national counterparts to take this cue, especially if, as some of them have indicated, they hope 2006 to be their version of the Republicans' 1994.
W.W.J.C.?
The ongoing debate over TennCare has also taken on a religious patina. By now you have surely seen the half serious/half-ironic "Who Would Jesus Cut?" bumper stickers on the rear ends of cars and trucks around town. And now state Sen. Jim Bryson and Rep. Beth Harwell are planning a "Health Care and Human Needs Informational Meeting" aimed at people losing TennCare and others unable to find health insurance. The venue? Lake Providence Missionary Baptist Church on Nolensville Road just south of Old Hickory Boulevard. While a representative from Bryson's staff assures us that the church was selected both for space reasons and because of its particular constituency (Lake Providence serves a large African American constituency, including many low- and middle-income families tied to TennCare), one can't help but wonder how the proceedings couldn't have any religious undertones. But find out for yourself: the meeting is open to the public and is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 17 at 7 p.m.
So, if you're scoring at home, the Tennessee Democratic Party is busily talking about values, faith and Christianity in politics while leading Tennessee Republicans are holding a town meeting at a prominent African American church for people lacking access to health care. This, folks, is why you need newspapers. If you didn't read it here, you'd never believe this stuff.