Clinton's revelation - how and why Bill Clinton needs to appeal to Southern Baptists

National Review, March 7, 1994 by Rich Lowry

AS SOON AS he had his voice back from the State of the Union address, President Clinton made a visit to a Southeast Washington junior high that could have been scripted by Bill Kristol. "Make up your mind you're not going to have a baby," Clinton urged the students, "till you're old enough to take care of it and until you're married."

It's Dan Quayle redux. Family values? After a State of the Union that included the applause line, "Governments don't raise children, parents do," 53 per cent of Americans said President Clinton shares their values, up from 44 per cent a week earlier. The Religious Right? Near the end of the same speech Clinton referred to "my good friend Tony Campolo," an evangelical professor at the American Baptist Eastern College.

Fresh from stealing Republican issues like crime and welfare, Clinton now looks to be taking what some see as the GOP's albatrosses too. Why? The answer is in the numbers: evangelicals, the "values constituency," account for a full quarter of the American electorate and, especially in the South and in the border states, are the rock upon which Republican presidential victories are built.

The erosion of evangelical support for the GOP in 1992 was one of the things that cost George Bush the election: roughly 70 per cent of self-identified evangelicals voted Republican in 1984 and 1988; only about 56 per cent in 1992. That contributed to Bush losses in Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. But Clinton the Southern Baptist lost ground too, winning roughly 28 per cent of the evangelical vote, even less than Dukakis (Perot took about 16).

So it shouldn't surprise when Clinton asks a dozen evangelicals--now referred to in the evangelical community as the "Gang of 12"--to the White House for a bull session and advice on how to minister to his spiritual life. That October breakfast produced gobs of the kind of material James Carville must dream about.

Take the evangelical leader Jack Hayford's report on the breakfast to his eight-thousand-member Southern California congregation. Hayford relates how White House volunteer Linda Lader asked him to lead off the breakfast roundtable (not surprising-- the night before Hayford had told her that God filled him with love for Clinton the day after the election). He goes on to say the President "is not as political as I would have expected." And he concludes: "he's a great man, a gifted man . . . I know that I was talking to a brother in Christ that I'm glad the Lord allowed me a chance to serve in a small way."

There's more. Says Tony Campolo: "He wants to cooperate with evangelicals in the task of rebuilding America." Writes Christianity Today columnist Philip Yancey: "I was sobered by the alienation that exists between evangelicals and the current Administration." (Yancey reports that an earlier column of his titled "Why Clinton Is Not Antichrist" prompted Al Gore to quip, "Well, Bill, you've got to start somewhere.") Robert Seiple, president of the relief agency World Vision, warned evangelicals against "the viciousness of these personal attacks against the President."

Return to the Fold

ARE THESE folks getting snookered by Clinton's spiritual avowals? It would be uncharitable to discount the President's faith (few who have met him would do so anyway), but in this, as in much else, it's difficult to untangle Clinton personal from Clinton political. He returned to religion around 1980. Losing a bid for re-election--as Clinton just had--could send anyone back to church. Joining the choir of one of Little Rock's largest churches, where services are broadcast on TV every Sunday--as Clinton did--could also help any politician win the next time around.

What's clear is that some evangelicals are innocent of the political import of their Clinton praise. "They want the evangelical leaders to go out of the meetings," says James A. Smith, who is with the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, "and tell the media and tell their friends, 'You know, I think he is seriously devoted to his faith.'" It's happening--in exchange, says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, for "bones and thin gruel" from the President. "He must," says the irreverent Sabato, "be really chuckling over this."

In some ways, evangelicals are easy marks. "We don't move in these circles," says former Nixon aide Chuck Colson, now head of the evangelical Prison Fellowship, "and when we do get invited it is simply breathtaking." But also the President is sometimes preaching to the choir. Notable among White House invitees have been members of the evangelical Left (yes, there is such a thing) more in tune with the President's views than most evangelicals. Tony Campolo, for one, endorsed gays in the military.

Tougher Audiences

WHEN the company Clinton keeps isn't so carefully calibrated, things can get dicey. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, the President sat just a yard from Mother Teresa as she, her head barely sticking above the lectern, denounced abortion. "Any country that accepts abortion," she said, "is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want." As the room stood and cheered, an uncomfortable President sipped his water and whispered to a stone-faced First Lady.