Choosing Presidents - Symbols of Political Leadership

372 Pages·8.449 MB·English

by  Michael Novak

SymbooPflo sl iLteiacdaelr ship
SecoEnddi tion
--_E,x panwdieathnd e,iw n troduction
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,b yth ea uthor
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CHOOSIPNRGE SIDENTS
SymboofPl osl iLteiacdaelr ship
Second Edition
Michael Novak
ExpanWdietadNh ,e wI ntrodbuytc hAteui tohno r
TransaPcutbiloins hers
New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)
..
New material this edition copyright© 1992 by Transaction Publishers,
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903.
Originally published in 1974 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo­
copy, recording, or permission in writing from the publisher. All in­
quiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers-The
State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 91-17280
ISBN: 1-56000-567-X
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Novak, Michael.
Choosing presidents: symbols of political leadership/Michael No-
vak, with a new introduction by the author.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Choosing our king, 1974.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56000-567-X
1. Presidents-United States-Election-I 972. 2. Presidents-United
States. 3. Symbolism. 4. National characteristics, American. I. No­
vak, Michael. Choosing our king. II. Title.
JK526 1972.N68 1991
324.973'0924-dc20 91-17280
CIP
CONTENTS
Intdruocttitooh Tner ansEadcittiioonn Xl
Acknowledgments
XXV
..
Preface XXVll
PART ONE
PRIEST, PROPHET, KING
I. SymboRleiacl ism 3
6
2. WhaAtr Sey mbols?
3. WhoA rWee ? 12
4. UnsePeonw er
15
5. EgaliatnaKdri inagn 19
6. FivEel emeonfSt ysm boPloiwce r 29
7. MakitnhgMe o sotfI mprobTaablleen ts
32
8. A ProfesMseimoon al's 41
9.T hLei tuorfLgy e adership 48
PART TWO
MORALISM 'AND MORALITY
10. BeiMnogr aanlBd e iPnrga ctical 57
ThCeo nstiotfCu oennsccyi ence
I 1. 63
ThaWto r"dM oral" 69
12.
VietMnoarmMe:o rTahla Tnh ou?
13.
74
ThRei asneFd a olfLl i beMroarla lism
14. 87
BeyoNnide bSuyhmrb:Ro elasilmci
15.
3
9
PART THREE
THE CIVIL RELIGIONS OF AMERICA
ThNea twiiottnhh Se o ouflaC hurch
16.
105
ThIen nocLeinncgOeen r s
17. Ill
ThCei vRiell igions
18. 123
FivPere osttCainvRtie ll igions
19. 131
Hihg-CchhAu mrerica
20. 137
ThSee coGnrdeT arta dition
21. 147
P�T FOUR
97
SYMBOLS OF 1 2
TriatdiSoynmablo ls
22. 163
NewH ampsShniorwes
23.
166
24.
The Wallace Sun
179
25.
lvlcCarthy in Illinois
190
26.
Sorting Out in Wisconsin
197
27T.og ether with McGovern at the Garden
217
28T.he Shooting of Governor Wallace
229
29.
Eight lvfa jor Presidential Symbols
232
PART FIVE
A NEW AND DARK FAITH
30A.m erica as a Business
241
3 Three Corruptions
I.
247
32R.ef orming the Presidency
258
33T.he Necessity of Dirty Hands
270
34T.he Dark Night of Faith 286
35. The New Dark Civil Religion
302
PARTS IX
AFfERWORD
36.C arter's Hidden Religious Majority 313
37.R ival Visions of "Community," 1988 320
38.M oiling, Muddling, and Malaise 334
39.M iracle in the Desert 337
A Select Bibliography 341
Index 349
INTRODUCTTOTI HOEN
TRANSACETDIIOTNI ON
I began with two convictions: that the presidency is the nation's most
central religious symbol, and that American civilization is best under­
stood as a set of secular religious systems.
Choosing our King, 197 4
Ever since childhood, presidential elections have stood out in my
memory above the flux of public events. Elections are great public
liturgies; they stamp imagination. My childhood was spent under
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and my first campaign memory (I was
seven) is of bright blue Wendell Willkie buttons in the school yard in
1940 and a flurry of competitive excitement. I can't recall whether it
was he or Dewey in 1944 who had the button, "We don't like Fala ei­
ther."
In the fifty-odd years since then, presidential elections have become
no less important. The distinctive symbolic weight each new incumbent
has imparted to that office is remarkable; the names Truman, Eisen­
hower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan still stir passion.
Each man really did give special color to an era, and even Gerald Ford
who served but two years brought peace to a troubled nation, just in
time for the moving bicentennial celebration of 1976.
Thus, the hypothesis that the American presidency is the most dra­
matic expression of our nation's "civil religion" has received further
confirmation in the four elections since the book's appearance. A few
words may serve to add those years to the perspective of this book. In
the Afterword, new materials have been added to cover the Carter
presidency and the Bush-Dukakis election in 1988. To complement
these, I will give more space here to the Reagan years .
.
Xl
..
Xll Choosing Presidents
Since Choosing Our King appeared in 1974 its argument has
demonstrated at least a little predictive power. Once an observer dis-
cerns how well the two nominees of their respective parties speak �e
five major symbolic languages of the nation, and which of the two can-
did ates better personifies the nation's sense of itself, the likely outcome
also looms into view. For example, the "civil religion" of American
evangelicals, I had noted in 1974, must one day become visible and
give us a new set of public symbols for presidential use. It did so
through Jimmy Carter two years later.
In 1975, I wrote a piece suggesting that Jimmy Carter, then at
barely 1 percent in the national polls, might well seize the Democratic
nomination ("Can a Protestant be Elected President?" The Christian
Century). A little later, in April of 1976, before Carter was nominated
and elected, I described for the Washington Post how his special "civil
religion" would likely affect a Carter presidency. Evangelicals are a
huge bloc of Americans whom our highly educated elites keep mis­
placing, and by April 1976, journalists were scrambling to "rediscover"
them yet again. Reprinted here in an Afterword, this essay offered a
predictive forecast of Jimmy Carter's strengths and weaknesses over
the next four years.
In 1980, using other symbolic materials, I came to believe that
Ronald Reagan would show greater strength than George Bush in the
nominating process and, to the surprise of most others too, would
soundly defeat Carter in November.
As readers of the original edition will know, I had worked for
George McGovern after mid-July 1972 as a paid staff member of his
Washington headquarters. At headquarters (1776 K St.) I didn't see
much of the candidate, whose pursuit of the nomination I had followed
on the campaign trail as a reporter and student of the presidency. Dur­
ing my first weeks on the job, after his nomination, my contributions to
Senator McGovern's campaign were mainly three: trying to give it a
focus on Catholic ethnic voters; writing one speech for the nominee to
give at a Catholic high school in Chicago, whose delivery several
highly placed campaign officials tried to block right up until the final
hour; and writing (under the name "George McGovern") a newspaper
op-ed piece arguing that security of life and limb is "the first of all civil
rights," and that a ·war on crime, far from being divisive, would unite
persons of all races who currently lived in fear of their physical safety.
From mid-August on, vice-presidential candidate Sargent Shriver
(whose acceptance speech I helped to draft) invited me to accompany
..
XU
Introduction to the Transaction Edition Xlll
him on his campaign plane. We were assigned the "Catholic ethnic
cities," doing tour after tour of Philadelphia, New York City, Buffalo,
Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St.
Paul, with forays to many other locations ( often Hispanic) thrown in.
We often made three different cities and seven or eight appearances
each day.
I learned to love both men-"Sarge" Shriver and George
McGovern-a great deal. But the particular ideological and symbolic
color that McGovern's staff gave to the Democratic Party seemed to
me a sad mistake. I was then developing an allergy to the left wing of
the party, which has not been cured since. With some difficulty I have
remained a Democrat, while watching with sorrow the abdication by
Democrats of most of the classic principles and understandings of the
Democratic Party of my youth. The party has more left me, I think,
than I it.
In any case, the ground that the Democratic Party was giving up
during the 1970s, not only regarding foreign policy but also regarding
the principles of individual opportunity and individual merit, was easily
occupied by a new sort of Republican. These were Republicans who
had broken with the Republican Old Guard, Republicans who thought
and felt and acted like the Democrats of yore. These new Republicans
could plausibly be called "conservatives" (if only as foils to "liberals"),
but they could by no stretch of the imagination be called Tories, Estab­
lishment Republicans, Isolationists, or "Green-eyeshade Republicans"
(constantly worried about balanced budgets). In style, the most capti­
vating among them was Jack Kemp, then-Congressman from New
York and a leader in the House. Kemp, in tum, seemed to capture the
imagination of Ronald Reagan, former Governor of California. With
both were a flock of Young Turks in the Congress ("the new right" as
balance to "the new left" of the 1960s) among whom were Newt
Gingrich and Vin Weber, joined by such older men of combat and
initiative as Henry Hyde.
Such leaders could well have been Democrats, if judged by their
zest of ideas, their activism, their worldwide engagement, and their vi­
sion of a new future. They thought of the progressive left, from Mc­
Govemites to Johnson's "Great Society," as "the establishment." One
could say they looked ahead to a Bastille Day of their own, except that
being predominantly from the American heartland their models were
hardly Jacobin but, on the contrary, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and
Thomas Jefferson. They loved the American idea. They hated socialism
Choosing Presidents
XlV
in all its forms, including French utopianism. For example, Jack
Kemp's focus was practical, and as mundane as tax cuts for the sake of
economic opportunity among his constituents in 'Buffalo. He and his
friends believed devoutly in what moderns call "democracy" but our
founders called "republican government" (" of the people, by the peo­
ple, for the people"). They saw vividly that what makes poor people
and workers love democracy is not the fact of voting every two or four
years but the steady economic betterment of their families, through
economic growth, opportunity, and incentives. This group might well
have been called "commercial republicans," like the generation of our
founders. They especially liked to quote John F. Kennedy-for his ac­
tivism, his optimism, his tax cuts, his "let's get America moving
again," and his willingness to engage in "the long twilight struggle"
with the forces of tyranny abroad.
By 1980, it seemed that Jimmy Carter had given the Democratic
Party the foreign policy of the progressive establishment known as
"McGovernites." Moreover, he and his young assistants Jody Powell
and Hamilton Jordan had a quite different "establishment" in mind
when they called themselves "anti-establishment." They did not like
those parts of the Democratic Party I thought of as the admirable and
dynamic center of the party: labor union leaders, big city "bosses,"
longtime elected Democrats in the congress and local government,
Jewish and other ethnic organizations, "cold warriors," and the like.
They preferred "the new politics" crowd, a bit left of center. There
were a lot of movie stars and rock singers in that crowd.
For such reasons, an observer could see that President Carter's hold
on the evangelical "civil religion" was weak and that his hold on tradi­
tional Democrats was even weaker. I had written in 1978 that the con­
tests of the future for the soul of the country would concern realities
close to the hearts of most Americans, but more and more neglected by
the new politics and the stars of the media: such "square" values as
work, farnily, and neighborhood. Ronald Reagan's pollster, Richard
Wirthlin saw that piece (it had ap red in a series of articles by
pea
Democrats in the journal Common Sense), and tested it in public
polling. The terms "work, family, neighborhood," and also " ce and
pea
strength," tested very well. Ronald Reagan made all five the leitmotif
of his long-shot campaign in 1980.
My son was at that time attending the Jesuit prep school in down­
town Washington, Gonzaga, alma mater of a great many Catholic sons
of the Kennedy-Johnson veterans of the New Frontier and Great Soci-