I doubt there are very many people who would think it was a good idea to add trial lawyers to the mix of pain and suffering in Newtown, Connecticut. But I find myself hoping there will be at least one good litigator on the scene in the coming months.
I am a political science professor. I am 56 years old, so this was my 15th presidential election, although I was born in the lull before the party conventions in 1956 and don’t really remember anything substantive about any of the elections before 1968. I have now run at least 5 prognostication contests related to presidential elections, that I can remember.
This fall I ran another one. It was gorgeous, perfectly calibrated to be fun even if the election got lopsided. It was fun. We had 25 participants.
I came in 22nd.
“Your teeth are a fascinating case!” is not a phrase you want to hear from your dentist.
The day I heard it I was visiting a new orthodontist. His face was alight, his eagerness to apply all his talents to my messed up teeth all too obvious. I was going to give him things to talk about with his colleagues for years.
I went to a different orthodontist to get my care. I found someone who wasn’t so excited about the train wreck in my mouth.
So I will certainly understand if some of you are put off by what I am about to say, but here goes anyway: 2012 may be a political scientist’s dream come true.
For a half hour break from the presidential election, watch this interview of Mark Noll and George Marsden:
I agree with most of what they say, but I think they, like many scholars who write on religion and the founding, err by focusing on the views of a few unrepresentative elites.
Consider for a moment the background and experiences of these founders. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were southern Anglican plantation owners. Hamilton was born and raised in the British West Indies, and in an era when few people traveled internationally, Jefferson and John Adams spent significant time in Europe. Franklin lived most of the last thirty-five years of his life in Britain and France. As adults, Franklin and Hamilton were nominal Anglicans, which means five of these six founders (83%) were Episcopalians (compared to 16% of all Americans in that era). Although 50 to 75 percent of Americans in the founding era may be reasonably classified as Calvinists, only one founder regularly referred to in these discussions worshiped at a Calvinist church—and John Adams is not a particularly good representative of this theological tradition.
True, Noll and Marsden call these folks “major” founders, but it is easy to slip from a focus on a few to the views of many (e.g. “The God of the founding fathers was a benevolent deity, not far removed from the God of eighteenth-century Deists…” Search for Christian America, 73). They always note that “some” founders were orthodox, but I would suggest this is as misleading as noting that “some” African Americans are Democrats.
I am not prepared to argue that many founders should be called “evangelical,” but how about Calvinists? If we expand range of founders to include folks like Samuel Adams, Elias Boudinot, Eliphalet Dyer, Oliver Ellsworth, Matthew Griswold, John Hancock, Benjamin Huntington, Samuel Huntington, Thomas McKean, William Paterson, Tapping Reeve, Jesse Root, Roger Sherman, John Treadwell, Jonathan Trumbull, William Williams, John Witherspoon, Oliver Wolcott, and Robert Yates, we get a very different impression of the founding generation (including folks like Roger Sherman who were key players in crafting America’s founding documents (unlike many, but not all, of the more famous founders).
And of course non-Calvinists can be good Christians too (e.g. John Jay, Patrick Henry, Henry Laurens).
Again, I agree with most of the video clip. I just want to make sure we don’t limit discussion of America’s founders to a few unrepresentative elites.
Mark David Hall
From The Washington Post (10/10/12):
“In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Romney seemed to back away from his antiabortion position, suggesting that he would not actively pursue legislation that would outlaw abortions, a key objective among social conservatives.
“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” Romney told the paper’s editorial board.”
Social conservatives have always been a bit suspicious of Romney on this point, and they may have reason to be concerned. But not by this recent admission.
In light of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, there is little hope that any legislation can make a serious dent in the number of abortions performed in America every year.
As far as this pro-life (but not single issue) voter is concerned, as long as Romney appoints another Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito to the United States Supreme Court, I will be satisfied.
MH
I am certainly no one to talk. When it comes to my work habits, the habitual parts about them are not the parts where I am actually working. I am distractable. My students pay a price: I am behind on my grading — again!
So I empathize totally with Barack Obama.
Yesterday when I was supposed to be grading (actually, I was grading! Just taking a break…) I ran across this article on the London Daily Mail’s MailOnline site. Toby Harnden describes Obama has having trouble focusing on his debate preparation homework in the days leading up to last week’s fateful encounter with Mitt Romney. His staff had taken him off to Henderson, Nevada, away from the media and the demands of office, so he could put in a couple of days’ serious preparation undistracted.
But Obama still got distracted. (Oh, yes, I know how easy it is.) Harnden quotes an unnamed Democrat “close to the campaign”:
President Obama made it clear he wanted to be doing anything else – anything – but debate prep,’ the Democrat said. ‘He kept breaking off whenever he got the opportunity and never really focused on the event.
What could POSSIBLY be distracting in Henderson, Nevada? Among other things, Hoover Dam, sitting there only 20 miles away!
According to Harndon, on the day before the debate a staff member mentioned that Hoover Dam was nearby. Obama decided he’d take another break from debate prep and visit the Dam. He’d never seen it, and this was his chance.
After all, his schedule that day only had one thing on it.
Here I am again. I have grading to do. The same grading I had to do yesterday when I was reading about Obama’s Hoover Dam road trip. Now I am writing about it. So I am definitely not saying I am any better than Obama when it comes to buckling down and getting the hard work done.
But is it possible that the story of Obama’s indiscipline on the day before the debate is more damaging to him than his lackluster performance in the debate?
I watched the debate with about 50 other people at George Fox, preparing to be on a faculty panel afterwards. I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes. At several points Obama seemed to be caught entirely off guard when Romney said perfectly predictable things — like Romney’s promise not to permit a tax cut to add to the deficit; his explanation that his tax cuts would actually reduce the deficit because a) he would set them off against eliminated deductions, and b) the economy would resume growing; or his promise to make sure the rich did not pay a lesser share of the tax burden than they do now. These are obvious comments, anyone who had listened to Romney could see them coming. But Obama clearly could not believe his ears. And he had no response.
But anyone could be caught flat-footed if they just made some poor assumptions in preparing for the debate. Did Obama believe his own campaign ads a little too much? Well, at least he was being consistent! It was embarrassing for him, I thought, and a bit of a black eye for his debate coaches, but not really a big deal. So while I mentioned Obama’s seeming surprise in my remarks to the GF students after the debate, I did not dwell on the topic.
But now it turns out that it wasn’t just poor work by Obama’s debate coaches. It was also Obama goofing off when he was supposed to be doing his homework.
A day or two ago Obama urged his supporters to be obsessive about campaigning right up through election day. Harnden has a photo of Obama sightseeing at Hoover Dam, playing hooky from debate prep — is that what he means by “obsessing” over the campaign?
People can forgive having a bad day at the debate podium. Can they forgive it as readily when the bad day was the result of lack of discipline the day before? Will Obama buckle down to the task now that he’s had a taste of the costs of distraction? And even if he does, will he be able to erase the image of a man with important work to do who can’t always get serious about getting it done?
Which reminds me: I have some grading to do. Somewhere around here.
In his recent book on the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin contends that Roberts and other conservatives are “judicial activists.” Judicial activism, he posits, is when the judiciary overrules democratically elected branches of government.
Toobin has a First Amendment right to define judicial activism however he wants, but he is being disingenuous. “Judicial activism” generally has a negative connotation. When is the last time you heard a Supreme Court Justice proudly proclaim “I am a judicial activist!”?
Courts, including the Supreme Court, play an important role in our constitutional system that includes checks and balances. When democratically elected branches of government violate the Constitution, Justices have an obligation to declare their actions void. This should not be called “activism,” it should be called “doing their job.”
Note: This note was written by Laura Jane Gifford, an adjunct professor of politics at George Fox University.
I was saddened to learn that former federal tax court judge, Nixon administration official and president and CEO of the World Wildlife Federation Russell Train died last week at the age of 92.
No, none of those job titles are typos. And yes, he was a member of Nixon’s party as well as his administration.
In this era of fractious political disagreements—disagreements that threaten to create an ever-widening chasm in place of the historically fertile grounds of compromise—it is easy to forget that men like Russell Train once existed. Train’s interest in environmentalism stemmed from his experiences on African safari in the 1950s and grew to encompass a strong conservationist ethic. Channeling the gospels of efficiency and expertise that characterized his Progressive Republican forebears, Train began by helping to create the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, charged with training postcolonial Africans to professionally manage their wildlife resources; by 1965 he felt sufficiently committed to the conservationist cause to resign his position as a judge and become head of the Conservation Foundation. As his biographer Brooks Flippen put it, “He did not share the attire—or the youth—of many of the new environmentalists but, like them, questioned traditional assumptions. He may not have recognized it at the time but he stood at the fore of a revolution in American attitudes.”[1]
Train believed in conservation; he was also profoundly pragmatic. Placed in charge of a transition team researching environmental policy, Train discovered he’d been seated next to the incoming president at a dinner a few days before Nixon’s inauguration. He seized his opportunity to make a case for the environment in terms he knew Nixon would find compelling. “I knew I couldn’t talk him into becoming an instant environmentalist,” Train recollected, “but it seemed entirely possible that he could become an effective proponent of environmental programs if it seemed to him good politics to do so. I have never for a moment doubted the wisdom of that decision.” Train spoke of how environmental issues touched a broad spectrum of the electorate, about how they could serve as a unifying issue in their era’s fractious political climate. “Quality of life” issues, he convinced the new president, were important—and politically advantageous.[2]
The years of the Nixon administration, then, were also the years of the Clean Air and Water Acts, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and governmental cooperation in observation of the first Earth Day. Train worked in the administration as Under Secretary of the Interior, in the executive office and then as head of the Environmental Policy Agency, a role in which he continued under Gerald Ford. Train did not always find administrations hospitable to his plans; following the 1972 election, in particular, Nixon soured somewhat on environmentalism’s political possibilities and the energy crisis began to overshadow other efforts. Still, Train described himself as a “moderate conservative,” committed to working within his party and his ideological framework for environmental protection. His commitment displays the potential that existed in the 1970s for Republican—even conservative Republican—political philosophy to follow an environmental track. “To my mind,” he explained, “to oppose environmental protection is not to be truly conservative. To put short-term financial gain ahead of the long-term health of the environment is a fundamentally radical policy, as well as being unethical. Conservation, which is essentially no more and no less than protection of the natural capital with which we have been endowed, should be seen as truly conservative.”[3]
Today, the lines between left and right have become more firmly drawn—and environmentalism appears squarely on the left. This was an outcome with which Train was profoundly unhappy. Torn between loyalty and irritation during the Reagan years, he preferred to remain aloof from politics, prompting criticism from other environmental leaders. Train found his longtime friendship with George H. W. Bush strained when, already concerned by the “mystifying and frustrating” ascendancy of neoconservative positions during Bush senior’s time in office, he felt compelled to speak out in opposition to George W. Bush’s environmental policy in the early 2000s.[4]
Train was as proud of his religious legacy as he was of his Republican heritage. Train was a leader in St. John’s Episcopal Church on Washington’s Lafayette Square, following in the footsteps of his father. His worldview was shaped by his faith, leading him to articulate a profoundly humane conception of environmental protection’s importance. “We don’t really have the option of not paying pollution costs at all,” he reflected. “The only question is in what form we pay them—in higher electricity bills or in higher doctor bills and higher rates of mortality and morbidity.”[5]
Thoughtful Christians can reach very different conclusions regarding how we should serve as stewards of God’s creation. Train’s life prompts careful reflection, however, upon the dichotomies we so often construct. “Conservation” does, after all, share a root with “conservative.” “Republican” need not sit in opposition with “environmentalist” (and “Democrat” is not necessarily an equivalent term). Train thought deeply and acted intentionally across boundaries. Our own careful consideration might illuminate new opportunities for enlightened stewardship.
[1] J. Brooks Flippen, Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 6.
[2] Russell E. Train, Politics, Pollution and Pandas: An Environmental Memoir (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003), 10.
[3][3] Train, xi, xiii, 332.
[4] Flippen, 10.
[5] Train, 189-90.
Anthony Gill, host of the podcast Research on Religion, interviewed me on September 14 on the topic of Christian responses to terrorism. Our conversation was particularly timely considering the wave of outrage across much of the Muslim world in response to the “Innocence of Muhammed” video.
Dr. Gill has posted the interview at the Research on Religion site. You can access it here. The podcast lasts 72 minutes. I hope you enjoy it.
What does the emergence of Mitt Romney as a Presidential candidate tell us about the American political story? Regardless of whether or not the Republican ticket wins the November election, the possibility that the nation could elect a Mormon as President has much to tell us about what makes America unique. And there could be profound political implications that stem from these beliefs that we should carefully consider. Here, I’ll focus mainly on the foreign policy dimensions and leave the domestic implications for another post.
In Mormonism, we have a set of beliefs based on revelations given to a 19th century American in upstate New York that has given birth to a religion with millions of adherents. The LDS (Latter Day Saints) Church has, at its core, a very strong sense of American exceptionalism as part of God’s holy plan. As Malise Ruthven assessed recently in the “New York Review of Books,” Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith had views very similar to Christian fundamentalists raised on literal interpretations of the Book of Revelation, i.e. that the Savior’s return was imminent, presaged by a Great Tribulation and the restoration of Israel. The difference was that Mormons believed then that they were the lost Israelites, and that the Book of Mormon would be a vehicle by which to convert Jews into the Kingdom of God.
Moreover, America (and the Americas) was argued to be not only a land of promise but, according to the Book of Mormon and church leaders since, the world’s most exceptional land that was actually visited by Jesus Himself. The head of the LDS in 1987 said that:
“Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel. Recall what our Savior Jesus Christ said nearly two thousand years ago when He visited this promised land: ‘For it is wisdom in the Father that they should be established in this land, and be set up as a free people by the power of the Father, that these things might come forth’ (3 Ne. 21:4, the Book of Mormon). America, the land of liberty, was to be the Lord’s latter-day base of operations for His restored church … For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God.”
Thus, Mormonism is the perfect form (or offshoot, depending on your views) of Christianity for extreme nationalism. It believes Jesus visited America, that the Garden of Eden was somewhere in Missouri, and that sees the US Constitution as an integral part of the divine order (which Jesus apparently personally foresaw in his appearances in America two millennia ago, and blessed).
Does this have implications for American foreign policy today? It’s hard to say, especially given that there are Mormons on both the left and right (Harry Reid is a Mormon and leader of the Senate Democrats, for example). But what if the possible leader of the free world emerges from a church sect – and personally believes himself – that asserts America alone has divine permission to do what it wants in the wider world, that America is subject to different standards than everyone else, and that geopolitics is about the global supremacy of the modern world’s first divinely ordained nation? At the very least, these views are very symmetrical with those neoconservatives (in the Republican party) who helped push the United States into war with Iraq from 2003-2011.
Might a Romney administration go down the same road? Perhaps a clue comes from Mitt Romney’s views of Iran and his relationship with Israel’s current leader. In June, Romney suggested that an attack on Iran was a question of the very survival for the United States: “we cannot survive a course of action [that] would include a nuclear Iran. We must be willing to take any and all actions.” More critically, he is known to have a close relationship with the current leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who the retiring director of Israel’s internal security service Shin Beit criticized earlier this year for making decisions – such as potentially attacking Iran – based on “messianic feelings.” Will a President Romney undertake to attack Iran and forcibly prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons?
In fact, we don’t know much about Romney’s foreign policy at this point because the 2012 presidential election has been framed by his campaign as almost entirely one focused on domestic policy. Notwithstanding the recent crisis in the Middle East, foreign policy statements by his campaign have been largely platitudes and not very specific about how Romney would conduct his own foreign policy. And because Romney has been exceedingly private about his faith, we don’t really know the extent to which Mormonism and its dogma might specifically impact a potential Romney presidency. But we do know this: nominating a candidate for President – and potentially electing him – who emerges from a religion that explicitly, at its core founding and in its core beliefs, posits that America is not only divinely blessed but indeed an exceptional place with the most important mission to play before the Second Coming, is a revealing turn in American history. While we’ve elected Presidents before accused of being inspired by Christian fundamentalist beliefs of the “end times” – George W Bush was often attacked for this, especially after the invasion of Iraq – having one in office from a sect that was founded specifically on the principle of a divinely-ordained American exceptionalism is, simply, remarkable.